Captain Harrington, of the ship _Castilian_, reported in the _Times_ of February 5th, 1858, that:
"On the 12th of December, 1857, N.E. end of St. Helena distant ten miles, he and his officers were startled by the sight of a huge marine animal which reared its head out of the water within twenty yards of the ship. The head was shaped like a long nun-buoy,[31] and they supposed it to have been seven or eight feet in diameter in the largest part, with a kind of scroll or tuft of loose skin, encircling it about two feet from the top. The water was discoloured for several hundred feet from its head, so much so that on its first appearance my impression was that the ship was in broken water."
Evidently, again, a large calamary raising its caudal extremity and fin above the surface, and discolouring the water by discharging its ink.
This was immediately followed by a letter from Captain Frederick Smith, of the ship _Pekin_, who stated that:
"On December 28th, 1848, being then in lat. 26° S., long. 6° E. (about half-way between the Cape and St. Helena), he saw a very extraordinary-looking thing in the water, of considerable length. With the telescope, he could plainly discern a huge head and neck, covered with a shaggy-looking kind of mane, which it kept lifting at intervals out of water. This was seen by all hands, and was declared to be the great sea-serpent. A boat was lowered; a line was made fast to the 'snake,' and it was towed alongside and hoisted on board. It was a piece of gigantic sea-weed, twenty feet long, and completely covered with snaky-looking barnacles. So like a huge living monster did this appear, that had circumstances prevented my sending a boat to it, I should certainly have believed I had seen the great sea-serpent."
In September, 1872, Mr. Frank Buckland published, in _Land and Water_, an account by the late Duke of Marlborough, of a "sea-serpent" having been seen several times within a few days, in Loch Hourn, Scotland. A sketch of it was given which almost exactly accorded with that of Pontoppidan's sea-serpent, namely, seven hunches or protuberances like so many porpoises swimming in line, preceded by a head and neck raised slightly out of water. Many other accounts have been published of the appearance of serpent-like sea monsters, but I have only space for two or three more of the most remarkable of them.