Peeking at Ivan's SITU files: meaningless reports of sea monsters.Part three.

Looking at ten more of these Sanderson notebook file newsclippings. For some reason, after the first two, a lot of 19th century clippings showed up.

Massachusetts, South Africa, and the Bristol Channel got featured in this set. They are, as usual, "mapped" crudely at the bottom by adding them to the previous twenty-four cases. I'm getting the impression that some of these sooner or later are going to duplicate themselves, and I may not pick up on all of that when it happens. You guys keep an eye out for those errors.

Case #25: off Brockton, MA, 1964. Minimalist report of a "sea monster" with a series of humps on its back.

#26: Mann Hill Beach, Scituate, MA, 1970. Another minimalist report. This time: thirty foot long "sea creature" like an elasmosaurus.

#27: Atlantic Ocean off South American coast [latitude 34.50 south; longitude 48 west]. 1824 0r 1834 [case is listed two ways on two different documents]. A "serpent", 40-foot long, no appendages, dark colored. Body = "barrel-sized" in diameter. Head held two feet above the surface and the size of a "ten-gallon keg".

#s 28&29: Gloucester Bay, MA, 1835 & 1834. Very long sea creature with head as big as a barrel and a "mane" on its neck. Head was raised seven to eight feet above surface as it swam. Motion was "serpentine". Each time it rose it made a hissing sound like steam escaping. Seen by several crew members. When told, another crewman said that he had seen an animal matching the description exactly while on the Bay the previous summer.

#30: Labrador Sea, 1834. On a voyage from Montreal to Greenock, UK, there was seen the head and "snout" of a "great fish" resting on the surface of the water. The head was twelve feet to its dome above the surface and 25 feet wide/long. The "snout" was 50 feet long. One very large dark "eye" stared out of the side of the head. The whole thing was colored a mottled light and dark green. The skin had a ribbed texture and the thing swam as fast as the ship.

#31: Camp's Bay, near Capetown, South Africa, 1845 or 1846. Observers saw a line of shining black objects like "casks" bobbing up and down. The line was 150-200 feet long. Object was one thing however as it showed in its entirety above the water during one sequence. This was one of those possibly paranormal days of water as smooth as glass; nevertheless, the thing produced frothing foam at one end. "Animal" suddenly turned and swam swiftly away.

#32: Table Bay, near Capetown, South Africa, 1857. This is the case of the drawing in the accompanying illustration above. Report is fragmentary. Case involved a blob-like body with an extremely long "tentacle" or tail [I am just interpreting the drawing now; there was little in the partial clip --- note, by the way that the pictured clip speaks of more than one case]. One witness fired two shots at the thing. It apparently whipped around radically between shots.

#33&34: Waters between Ireland and Bristol Channel, 1907? [reference in notebook does not have a date.] This is the Arthur Rostron case [and a supporting one]. Rostron and deckhands see "sea serpent" head and neck rise out of water nearby ship. Head elevated 8 or 9 feet from surface. Its neck was a foot in diameter. The head turned with suddenness like a bird's does as it hunts the ground. Later in port at Queenstown, Rostron and his captain heard of a report by a fisherman who had a confrontation with a "sea serpent" near the Bristol Channel the following day.

One cannot help being interested in the cases where there seemed to be an independent confirmation [or something very near to such]. [ a la 28/29 and 33/34]. #32 is a wild thing but not unlike#30. #27 seems a classic. With stuff like this being attested to, it is no wonder that someone like Oudemans would write a book about these alleged beasts by the end of the century.

The bad news is: I've had three days of recovering from back muscle pull, which led to some pelvic shifting about and now I'm two further days into a different siege with different lower back nuisance. This literal pain-in-the-back is messing up my ability to do any serious reading ---thus I haven't been able to work up anything specifically on the Caddy stuff yet. Well, they say that Patience is a virtue. Back is mildly screaming now in fact, so ... so long till next time.