CHAPTER 1 A Floating Reef

      In the year 1866 the whole maritime population of Europe and America was excited by a mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon. This excitement was not confined to merchants, sailors, sea-captains, shippers, and naval officers of all countries, but the governments of many states on the two continents were deeply interested.

      The excitement was caused by an enormous ‘something’ that ships were often meeting. It was a long, spindle-shaped, and sometimes phosphorescent object, much larger and more rapid than a whale.

      The different accounts that were written of this object in various log-books agreed generally as to its structure, wonderful speed, and the peculiar life with which it appeared endowed. If it was a cetacean it surpassed in bulk all those that had hitherto been classified; neither Cuvier, Lacepède, M. Dumeril, nor M. de Quatrefages would have admitted the existence of such a monster, unless he had seen it with his own scientific eyes.

      By taking the average of observations made at different times – rejecting the timid estimates that assigned to this object a length of 200 feet, as well as the exaggerated opinions which made it out to be a mile in width and three in length – we may fairly affirm that it surpassed all the dimensions allowed by the ichthyologists of the day, if it existed at all. It did exist, that was undeniable, and with that leaning towards the marvellous that characterises humanity, we cannot wonder at the excitement it produced in the entire world.

      On the 20th of July, 1866, the steamer Governor Higgenson, of the Calcutta and Burnach Steam Navigation Company, met this moving mass five miles off the east coast of Australia. Captain Baker thought at first that he was in presence of an unknown reef; he was preparing to take its exact position, when two columns of water, projected by the inexplicable object, went hissing up a hundred and fifty feet into the air. Unless there was an intermittent geyser on the reef, the Governor Higgenson had to do with some aquatic mammal, unknown till then, which threw out columns of water mixed with air and vapour from its blowholes.

      A similar occurrence happened on the 23rd of July in the same year to the Columbus, of the West India and Pacific Steam Navigation Company, in the Pacific Ocean. It was, therefore, evident that this extraordinary cetaceous creature could transport itself from one place to another with surprising velocity, seeing there was but an interval of three days between the two observations, separated by a distance of more than 700 nautical leagues.

      Fifteen days later, two thousand leagues from the last place it was seen at, the Helvetia, of the Compagnie Nationale, and the Shannon, of the Royal Mail Steamship Company, sailing to windward in that part of the Atlantic between the United States and Europe, each signalled the monster to the other in 42° 15’ N. lat. and 60° 35’ W. long. As the Shannon and the Helvetia were of smaller dimensions than the object, though they measured 300 feet over all, the minimum length of the mammal was estimated at more than 350 feet. Now the largest whales are never more than sixty yards long, if so long.

      These accounts arrived one after another; fresh observations made on board the transatlantic ship Le Pereire, the running foul of the monster by the Etna, of the Inman Line; a report drawn up by the officers of the French frigate La Normandie; a very grave statement made by the ship’s officers of the Commodore Fitz James on board the Lord Clyde, deeply stirred public opinion. In light-hearted countries jokes were made on the subject; but in grave and practical countries like England, America, and Germany, much attention was paid to it.

      In all the great centres the monster became the fashion; it was sung about in the cafés, scoffed at in the newspapers, and represented at all the theatres. It gave opportunity for hoaxes of every description. In all newspapers short of copy imaginary beings reappeared, from the white whale, the terrible ‘Moby Dick’ of the Northern regions, to the inordinate ‘kraken,’ whose tentacles could fold round a vessel of 500 tons burden and drag it down to the depths of the ocean. The accounts of ancient times were reproduced: the opinions of Aristotle and Pliny, who admitted the existence of these monsters, and the Norwegian tales about Bishop Pontoppidan, those of Paul Heggede, and lastly the report of Mr Harrington, whose good faith could not be put in question when he affirmed that, being on board the Castillian, in 1857, he saw this enormous serpent, which until then had only frequented the seas of the old Constitutionnel newspaper.

      Then broke out the interminable polemics of believers and disbelievers in learned societies and scientific journals. The ‘question of the monster’ inflamed all minds. The journalists who professed to be scientific, at strife with those who professed to be witty, poured out streams of ink during this memorable controversy; some even two or three drops of blood, for they wandered from the sea serpent to the most offensive personalities.

      During the first months of the year 1867 the question seemed to be buried out of sight and mind, when fresh facts brought it again before the public. It had then changed from a scientific problem to be solved to a real and serious danger to be avoided. The question took another phase. The monster again became an island or rock. On the 5th of March, 1867, the Moravian, of the Montreal Ocean Company, struck her starboard quarter on a rock which no chart gave in that point. She was then going at the rate of thirteen knots under the combined efforts of the wind and her 400 horse-power. Had it not been for the more than ordinary strength of the hull in the Moravian she would have been broken by the shock, and have gone down with 237 passengers.

      The accident happened about daybreak. The officers on watch hurried aft, and looked at the sea with the most scrupulous attention. They saw nothing except what looked like a strong eddy, three cables’ length off, as if the waves had been violently agitated. The bearings of the place were taken exactly, and the Moravian went on her way without apparent damage. Had she struck on a submarine rock or some enormous fragment of wreck? They could not find out, but during the examination made of the ship’s bottom when under repair, it was found that part of her keel was broken.

      This fact, extremely grave in itself, would perhaps have been forgotten, like so many others, if three weeks afterwards it had not happened again under identical circumstances, only, thanks to the nationality of the ship that was this