I have not had the opportunity of consulting this work, but the passage about the sea-serpent runs m
- Date of account
- Late nineteenth-century survey
- Source
- The great sea-serpent: an historical and critical treatise
- Reference
- The great sea-serpent: an historical and critical treatise · selected passage 195
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English edition of a European scholarly compilation
- Translation
- English edition of A. C. Oudemans's historical survey
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
PONTOPPIDAN further tells us that the sea-serpent sometimes encloses ships by laying itself round them in a circle, that the fishermen then row over its body there where a coil is visible, for when they reach the coil, it sinks, while on the contrary the invisible parts rise
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyPONTOPPIDAN further tells us that the sea-serpent sometimes encloses ships by laying itself round them in a circle, that the fishermen then row over its body there where a coil is visible, for when they reach the coil, it sinks, while on the contrary the invisible parts rise. Further, that the serpent swims with an incredible velocity, and that the fishermen who are much afraid of it, when seeing that it follows them, throw any object, for instance a scoop, at it, when the animal generally plunges into the deep. But most fishermen are in the habit of taking castoreum with them, for the serpent cannot bear the smell of it. And still further on he tries to explain the considerable length of the animal some witnesses speak of; the Bishop namely believes that two or more individuals followed each other, for they are only seen in rutting-time.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis is a historical compilation of unusual-animal reports and argument. Witness testimony, repetition between publications and the author's zoological assumptions all affect independence and reliability.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares morphology, behaviour and setting while keeping misidentification, folklore, exaggeration, error and known animals available as alternatives.
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