Serpent Dead or Alive:
The weather was fair when the schooner Maid of Judah encountered a 120 foot sea serpent South of Australia. Some of the crew were aloft and some on deck, but all of them got a good view of the sea serpent. The encounter was reported in Australian and New Zealand newspapers. There was something odd about the encounter unlike other sea serpent encounters...
The Sighting
The odd thing about this encounter was: they couldn’t figure out if the serpent was alive or dead. The length of the sea serpent appeared to be as long as the ship. It was brownish green in color. They had a good view of the body and tail, but not the head. The thing that disturbed the crew was the serpent didn’t seem to be moving. They noted that it was broadside to the sea as if swimming, but not as fast as the ship. It hardly seemed to be moving if it was swimming. This did leave the crew with the feeling that maybe it was motionless. Did they encounter a sea serpent or a piece of flotsam? Maybe it was a mast? Masts are normally made in sections and not 120 feet in length. Was it the keel of a capsized boat sticking out of water? Surely they would have seen the rest of the hull of the ship if it was capsized and waterlogged. The Maid of Judah passed within 40 yards of the creature, with view angles from aloft and on deck. We’ll give the mariners the benefit of the doubt that they could tell a piece of wreckage/seaweed from a sea serpent. Perhaps this was a sea serpent, and perhaps it was dead or dying.
Thoughts about the sighting
About a decade later, an article in a New Zealand newspaper discussed the topic of sea serpents and an interesting sentence appeared in the article indirectly related to the Maid of Judah sighting. The newspaper noted: “The fact of the sea serpent’s small commercial value has probably been its salvation hitherto, while the whale is hunted to death in every quarter of the globe.” This statement got me thinking about a phenomena in the Hawaiian Islands that Captain Charles Moore wrote about in his book “Plastic Ocean”. Moore noted that when one species was decimated in the foot chain, other species lacking a predator multiplied. What happened was: the area was stripped of its food resources and then these other species died out as well. Following this example of a food chain collapsing, what if the giant oarfish (sea serpents) and whales are directly or indirectly connected in the food chain. Its just a theory, but when whaling was decimating the number of whales in the 19th century, giant oarfish species may have been indirectly driven to extinction because they were competition or predators of the whales. 19th century whaling may have had an indirectly impact on deep sea life that will not be revealed until humans are able to explore the deeper parts of the ocean.
References
Otago Dialy Times, Issue 4939, 15 December 1877, pg. 3. - Brief account of the schooner Maid of Judah’s encounter with a sea serpent.
Wanganui Herald, Volume XIII, Issue 3019, 7 January 1878, pg. 2. - A more detailed account of the sea serpent sighting by the Maid of Judah.
Otago Witness, Issue 1826, 19 November 1886, pg. 21. - Some interesting discussion in this article about the whaling versus the lack of hunting of sea serpents.
Capt. Charles Moore (with Cassandra Phillips), Plastic Ocean, New York: Avery, Penguin Group, 2012.