Box 3
Folder 17. Family Circle
Item 1. June 1940

Transcribed Text (OCR)
GARY MANGIACOPA ARCHIVE ============================================================ Title: B3F17I1 Slug: b3f17i1 Categories: Cryptozoology Source: https://garymangiacopraarchive.com/b3f17i1 Pages: 6 scanned, 6 extracted OCR: Google Vision API (document_text_detection) Processed: 2026-06-06 ============================================================ THE FAMILY CIRCLE JUNE 28, 1940 (Vol. 16 #26) GRETA CARBON no longer noids such mystery for Herry Evans was she once did, and he tells way in "Hollywood Diary which also fea tures Elsa Maxwell, George Murphy THIS SEA SERPENT do hed by a medievaloris more fantastic than many of the aoisters of the deep supposedly sees in modern times. Ser age [PAGE BREAK] SEEING THE LILY CIRCLE THINGS AT be a mile and a half in circumference, so that it looked more like a group of islands than a continuous creature. It had horns as high as the masts of a vessel and it could lift its head out of the water higher than the main- mast. Its body was four times the size of a ship and was covered with shellwork, and it had great broad paws and arms capable of dragging down a sizable vessel. It spouted like a whale and gloried in a musky odor so powerful that it attracted great shoals of fish. Norwegian fishermen often profited by this and made phenomenal catches, but they had to be careful because if the monster suddenly decided to take a nose dive, the suction as it submerged would drag boats and men down with it. From the description of the Kraken as given by the Bishop of Ber- gen, it now seems likely that it was a giant squid of a variety known to science for only the past 50 years or so. AT T five o'clock in the afternoon of Au- gust 6, 1848, H.M.S. Daedalus was run- ning along prettily on her way from the Cape of Good Hope to St. Helena. Her captain, Peter M'Quhae, was walking the deck with two of his officers when a midshipman came up to them in a state of considerable excite- * ment and reported that something very ex- traordinary was approaching the ship. The four men hurried to the prow of the boat where they were joined by three men of the crew, and there they stayed for about 20 minutes watching an enormous creature like a serpent, its head and shoulders about four feet out of the water, with a neck more than a foot in diameter and a mane like that of a horse. It seemed to be about 60 feet long, . was dark brown in color with a yellowish- white throat, and was traveling at the rate of about 12 knots an hour, though how it pro- pelled itself the watchers could not make out. Afterward the captain said it came so close to the ship that had it been a man, he could have made out the features. When the captain berthed his ship in Eng- land in October, he reported what they had seen to the Admiralty office. His report, printed in the newspapers, made a stir, and the first thing the reporters did was inter- view a prominent scientist, Sir Richard Owen, later described as the most ponderous naturalist of his day. He made a statement about the captain's report that was entirely in character. He said flatly and definitely that what Captain M'Quhae had seen was a seal, and that the reason he had mistaken it for a sea serpent and described it as such was prob- ably because he had been reading accounts of the Kraken, Norway's fabulous monster, the most famous sea serpent of its own and per- haps of all time. But Captain M'Quhae was a man who knew his own mind and trusted his own eyes, and he replied to Sir Richard Owen saying that what he had seen was not a seal; as a seafaring man he knew a seal when he saw one. What he had seen was a sea serpent and he had six good men and true to back him up. And as for the Kraken, he had never heard of the beast until Sir Richard men- tioned him. So dignified and reasonable- sounding was the captain's answer to the pro- fessor that to this day it is the captain's 14 Though the Pacific doesn't often figure in sea-serpent stories, this picture (which appeared in a New York paper in 1879) sup- posedly shows what happened to a boat crew from the U.S.S. Pensacola when it tried to catch a giant ray, or sea devil, off the Lower California coast Here is what scientists say was the real sea serpent of long ago. It's a 27-foot tylosaurus, a giant mosasaur, extinct for 80,000,000 years, but which once lived in the inland sea of Kansas in the Cretacean age This photo, though poor, is the clearest ever made of the Loch Ness monster. Dr. Roy Chapman An- drews says it looks like a killer whale's dorsal fin story rather than the professor's comment which is credited by many, and the Daedalus sea serpent ranks high in the list of some 250 more or less authentic creatures that were seen and described between 1520 and 1890. When Owen said that M'Quhae must have had the Kraken in mind, he was referring to a monster that flourished in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The part of its back which appeared above the water was said to Hans Egede's sea serpent, which he described in 1734, (Above, right) Showing how a giant squid partly out of water may have been what Egede saw No OT all the best sea serpents lived far away and long ago. We had a fine speci- men right off our own shores and either it or various members of its family were seen fre- quently off the coast of Gloucester between 1817 and 1820. This creature was said to have a dark brown body about 50 feet long, jointed, and about the thickness of a man's trunk. Its snakelike head was as large as that of a horse. The Linnaean Society of Boston, [PAGE BREAK] EA ARE THERE SUCH THINGS AS SEA MONSTERS? MOST SCIEN- TISTS SAY NO, AND YET BY JO PENNINGTON a body of naturalists, sent a committee of three to take the testimony of eyewitnesses, and as all the men selected to give evidence were reputable, the Gloucester sea serpent has even today a fairly good standing. It was said- to have been seen again in 1822, 1826, and 1849, and then finally in 1875, after which it vanished forever from the sight of man. Unless, of course, the Pasture Pond sea serpent which turned up in 1886 was the same creature. This monster came up out of the sea near Provincetown, Cape Cod, in 1886, walked across the dunes, and disappeared in the depths of Pasture Pond. The pond was all drained except for a hole in the middle which seemed to be bottomless (the lead did When this 27-foot body was thrown up on the French coast near Cherbourg, there was so little left of it that it could not readily be identifled, but one can see how easy it must have been to conclude that it had the form of a sea serpent The Daedalus sea serpent, seen in 1848, is one of the best au- thenticated because the captain and some of his crew watch- ed it nearby for 20 minutes not touch at 250 fathoms-1,500 feet). In 1939 a 40-foot skeleton was washed up at Provincetown and Cape Codders were con- vinced that this was all that remained of the creature which 50 years ago had dis- appeared in the hole in Pasture Pond and had gone by some underground channel back to the sea. Maine had a sea serpent which was said to haunt Penobscot Bay around 1780. The crew of a schooner lying at the mouth of the river told how it leaped over their boat between the masts, and though theirs was a craft of 80 tons, it sank the boat one strake, or plank, by its weight as it touched the deck. That to me is an admirable sea-serpent story, worthy of the land where stories grow taller than anywhere else. In July, 1875, the crew of H.M.S. Pauline, on its way from Shields to Zanzibar, saw what they reported to be a sea serpent wrapped with two turns of its body around a sperm whale. They gave a vivid description of the battle they witnessed, but it is now known that what they saw was a natural and not an unusual sight-a sperm whale at- A balloon fish, as reported by the captain of the Saladin. He swore it was 100 feet long, 40 feet wide, and stood 12 feet out of the water. After the captain and crew had watched the fish for an hour, it de- flated its balloon and sank Capturing a sea monster in an Italian harbor. 16th century tacking and killing its regular dinner, a squid, which in its death struggles had wrapped its tentacles around the whale. Only a few years ago Canada produced a sea serpent which became almost a national pet. It was given the name Cadborosaurus, or Caddy for short, and was first seen in the fall of 1933 by a resident of Pender Island, British Columbia. Later that same fall some remains of a marine creature were found and measured, and proved to be those of a mon- (Plan [PAGE BREAK] Suturally Mother Nature twice-blessed the lertile valley that nurtures luscious Concords for Church's Grape Juice. First she gave it sunshine. Then ahe added a special volcanic soll that makes Church's Grape Julce natur- ally sweet. Unlike others. no sugar is ever added. Try a bottle soon! NO SUGAR ADDED! CHURCH'S GRAPE JUICE CHURCH'S GRAPE JUICE More Tailwags Per Can STRONGHEART DOG STRO LOG CAT FO FOOD BOYLE PACKING CO., LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA MOMENCE, ILLINOIS KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI MERRY MARSHMALLOW MEN Graduates and grooms-professors and perambulators parad- ing across your table! And you make them yourself-with marshmallows! A clever booklet, PARTY FRILLS has original ideas, instructions and illustrations for making favors for en- gagement, graduation, baby showers, and 4th of July parties. Also included are delicious recipes for marshmallow desserts and salads. Send your name, address and 10c to JULIA LEE WRIGHT, Homemakers' Bureau, Box 660MP, Oakland, Calif. 16 SEEING THINGS AT SEA (Continued from page 15) ster 40 feet long with a head like a horse except that it had neither ears nor nostrils. The English, except for their ponderous naturalists, take their sea serpents seriously. Rudyard Kipling, Lord Northcliffe, and A. Conan Doyle all described sea serpents which they met in their travels. Kipling's short story "A Matter of Fact" gives a descrip- tion of such a monster, which may have been based on the one he actually saw: "Some six or seven feet above the port bulwarks, framed in fog, and as utterly unsupported as a full moon, hung a face. It was not human and it certainly was not animal. The mouth was open, revealing a ridiculously tiny tongue. There was no sign of teeth in the mouth; but the horror of the face lay in the eyes, for those were sightless-white, in sockets as white as scraped bone, and blind. Queen Victoria's yacht Osborne came back home in 1877 and reported that it had sighted a sea serpent off Cape Vita in Sicily in June. I cannot help wondering what the Queen said when she heard the story-maybe some- thing like "We are not amused." It may well have been that she thought no yacht of hers had any business seeing sea serpents. T HE Irish sea serpent is, naturally, just a bit more remarkable than that pro- duced by any other nation. It appeared in Ballycottin Bay near Cork, attacked a party of fishermen, and, on being shot, disappeared after disgorging a whole shoal of fish. And those fish, whèn handled by the men in the boats, gave them terrific electric shocks! But it is the Scotch who have produced what is the finest sea serpent of modern times. And not only did they do it once, but they have kept on producing it almost every summer. It was first seen in Loch Ness, a long, narrow body of water actually part of the Caledonian Canal, which cuts across the Scottish Highlands in a diagonal line from Moray Firth on the east coast southwest to the Firth of Lorne on the other side. Loch Ness has always had a rather sinister repu- tation. It is believed that this loch never gives up its dead; anyone who drowns in it stays down for good and all. The kelpies, or waterhorses, of Scottish legend are said to make it their headquarters. Such stories make Loch Ness an ideal setting for a sea serpent and certainly no Highlander was surprised when one appeared in 1933-40 to 50 feet long with a large whiskery head and eight humps on its back. It apparently can travel about 40 miles per hour but never comes nearer the shore than 100 yards. FR THE FAMILY CIRCLE THE PERSONAL TOUCH (Continued from page 12B) ROM Thomas F. Lynch, 726 S. W. 11t Ave., Portland, Oregon, comes this selec tion by Mark Twain, which we are glad t reprint. THE LOWDOWN ON MAN Man can't sleep out-of-doors without freez ing to death or getting rheumatism; he can' keep his nose under water over a minut without being drowned. He's the poores clumsiest excuse of all the creatures that in habit the earth. He has to be coddled, swathed, and ban daged to be able to live at all. He is a ricket sort of thing any way you take him-a regu lar museum of inferiorities. He is always undergoing repairs. A ma chine as unreliable as he is would have n market. The lower animals appear to get their teeli without pain or inconvenience; man's con through after months of cruel torture at time when he is least able to bear it. A soon as he gets them, they must be pulle out again. The second set will last for a while, bu he will never get a set that he can depen on until the dentist makes one. Man starts in as a child and lives on dis case to the end as a regular diet. He has mumps, scarlet fever, whooping cough, tonsilitis, and diphtheria as a matte of course. Afterward, as he goes along, his life con tinues to be threatened at every turn by colds coughs, asthma, bronchitis, quinsy, consump tion, yellow fever, blindness, influenza, car- buncles, pneumonia, softening of the brain and a thousand other maladies of one sor. and another. He's just a basketful of pestilent corrup tion provided for the support and entertain ment of microbes. Look at the workmanshi of him in some particulars. What's the appendix for? It has no value Its sole interest is to lie and wait for a stray grape seed and breed trouble. What is his beard for? It's just a nuisance All nations persecute with a razor. Nature however, always keeps him supplied with it instead of putting it on his head. A man wants to keep his hair. It is a grace- ful ornament, a comfort, the best protection against weather, and he prizes it above emer- alds and rubies, and half the time nature puts it on so it won't stay. Man isn't even handsome, and as for style look at the Bengal tiger-that ideal of grace. physical perfection, and majesty. Think of the lion, the leopard-then think of man, that poor thing. The animal of the wig, the ear trumpet, the glass eye, the por- celain teeth, the wooden leg, the silver wind- pipe-a creature that is mended all from. top to bottom. -MARK TWAIN Many doubtful persons have gone to Inver- WE are indebted to Helen G. Groshart, ness, a summer resort on the shore of the loch, expecting to scoff at the story, but they have often come back complete converts to a belief in the creature. There was even talk of capturing it until Commander R. T. Gould, R. N. (Retired), author of a book called "The Case for the Sea Serpent," pointed out that it would require a net 3,000 by 900 feet manipulated by a fleet of tugs, and that traffic through the Caledonian Canal would be tied up for the entire time of cap- ture. The chief argument in favor of its exis- tence is that four monks and the abbot emeri- tus of the Benedictine monastery at Fort Augustus on the shore of the loch have all given sound and sober testimony as eyewit- nesses. Obviously these pious men have no (Please turn to page 20) 2065 Holly St., Denver, Colorado, for the opportunity to reprint the following poem. I know within my heart, dear one, That there are rare sweet moments when For just your fleeting hand in mine God's heaven will send you back again. I know that when tempestuous days Make tatters of my dreams, you'll span The distance from the farthest star To bring me courage-if you can. Oh, yes, but years have made me brave- Grim life I dare to face alone; I do not ask that you shall leave A paradise for that, my own. But when, through autumn's dusk A thread of hearth-fire smoke I see, Then, oh, my dear, though heaven be sweet, Please walk that twilight road with me! [PAGE BREAK] HOW TO BE POPULAR WITH YOUR FAMILY Do you serve Canada Dry only when guests drop in? Or do you serve it to your family regularly -to prove to them they're the nicest "company" of all? Try it. Treat your family as you do your guests-with delicious Canada Dry "The Champagne of Ginger Ales"! And don't forget Sparkling Canada Dry Water. Its pin-point carbonation lasts 24 hours after the bottle is opened. Keep both these beverages always on hand... and be popu- lar in your own home! CLUB Sparklin CANADA DR WATER CANADA DR LE GINGER A CANADA DRY BEVERAGES SEEING THINGS AT SEA (Continued from page 16) reason either to lie or exaggerate, and the abbot has lived on or near the loch for the better part of 50 years. Naturalists, after reading reports and studying drawings of the Ness Monster, have pronounced it a giant squid, an elephant seal, an enormous croco- dile, a German blimp that has been floating around since 1918, or a hippopotamus. A crocodile or a hippopotamus swimming around in a Scottish loch is almost harder to believe in than a sea serpent. Roy Chapman Andrews studied the photograph which a London newspaper correspondent took of it and said that what appeared to be the head and shoulders of a sea serpent bore a striking resemblance to the dorsal fin of a killer whale. When a young man whose name is not re- vealed went to Dr. W. Reid Blair, the direc- tor of the New York Zoological Park, and offered to go to Loch Ness, capture the mon- ster, and bring it back alive, Dr. Blair said he would pay $25,000 for it if it was in good health and at least 40 feet long. Dr. Blair later said he made the offer as a joke, but he THE FAMILY CIRCLE For example, he might have seen porpoises swimming one behind the other, rising regu- larly to take breath and so giving the appear- ance of a snakelike creature moving in ver- tical undulations. He might have seen a slight of seafowl or a brood of ducks swimming on the water, or masses of seaweed half awash. He might have seen basking sharks, which when not basking often swim in pairs one behind the other with the dorsal fin and upper lobe of the tail just above the surface, thus giving the appearance of a body 50 to 60 feet long. He might have seen a ribbon- fish or an oarfish, which often grow to be 20 to 30 feet long, are snakelike in form, and abound in the Mediterranean. And he might have seen sea lions breaking the surface of the water to breathe. But what he most probably and most fre- quently saw and took for a sea serpent-at least in the old days-was the giant squid, not long known to science. These abound on the coasts of Scandinavia, the British Isles, and the eastern coast of North America, in all of which places, as you have seen, the best sea serpents are found. cannot be entirely skeptical about the pos- ADMITTING that any of the above-named sible existence of the sea serpent because he also said, "Seriously, there's no doubt in my mind that some unusual and unknown creature is showing itself in that lake." The town of Inverness has profited by its serpent. Shops in the town are full of repro- ductions of it-wooden monsters for chil- dren to ride like hobbyhorses; rubber ones to blow up and cling to when swimming; and little bronze objects of the unnamable species known as novelties. The monster even had its portrait painted and exhibited-ap- propriately enough in water color. A recent shortage of salmon in the lake was attributed to the creature, who was presumably taking more than his share. The Scotch govern- ment has seriously warned visitors that they would be punished if they harmed their marine attraction. F OR some reason it is always slightly dis- creditable to have seen a sea serpent. The author of "Mysteries of the Sea," J. G. Lock- hart, wonders why this should be so, and Kipling's "A Matter of Fact" is based on the unbelief invariably shown toward any de- scription of such a phenomenon. Plenty of people believe in ghosts and are not only said to be psychic but get good money for their ghostly messages. The Irish believe in fairies and the Scotch in changelings and are ac- cordingly thought charming and romantic. The Chinese and other Oriental races be- lieve in dragons and that seems sinister and fascinating. But let any man say he has seen a sea serpent and he is immediately called a poor deluded being. Especially by the naturalists. And more attention would be paid to their doubting comments if they could themselves agree as to what actually is seen. But when they see a drawing or photograph or are told a story or shown the remains of a sea monster, they all begin to give different opinions. Basking shark, says one; bottlenosed whale, says, an- other; fur-bearing seal, sea cow (which are may have been taken for a sea serpent, there is still the question: Is there such a thing? "When, however, all these and similar possibilities have been explored, there still remain a number of independent and appar- ently credible stories which are not satisfac- torily explained." That is what H. W. Parker, B.A., of the Natural History Museum of South Kensington says in his article in the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. And he makes this further comment: "In the depths of the sea there still may exist gigan- tic creatures of which we have no knowledge and without this knowledge, remote though it may be in the background, it is unwise to deny the existence of sea serpents." Louis Agassiz, one of the greatest American natural- ists, and Philip Gosse and Henry Lee, well known British naturalists, all of whom lived in the latter part of the 19th century-these and many other sound men of science say that there may well be such a creature as a sea serpent. A distinguished British naturalist and traveler, Malcolm Burr, in 1934 wrote that no known creature fulfills all the conditions given in descriptions of the sea serpent-the reptilian appearance, the spouting like that of a whale, the frill or mane around the neck, the notched crest on the back. But there may be in the sea a huge lizardlike creature (a tailed batrachian related to the newts) which would come very near to hav- ing all those attributes. The land species, of small, but there is no reason why the marine variety may not be large, and the most curious point of resemblance is that the male of the former species has a notched crest along the neck which dries up after the mating season. In any event, no one be- lieves any longer, as they did in the last century, that the sea serpent is a survival from prehistoric times of some creature like the plesiosaurus, a marine reptile which has been extinct for 60,000,000 years. course, supposed to be extinct), blackfish, ribbonfish, NOTHING the sea can ever produce is German blimp, hippopotamus-what are we to think of these learned men who are so un- able to agree among themselves? Of course, it is probable that many times when a traveler brings home a story of a sea serpent he has mistaken some known creature for the more questionable species. likely to rival in horror and strange- ness the giant squid which was taken aboard a Gloucester schooner in 1870. Parts of this creature were sent to the Peabody Museum at Harvard and from them the entire animal was reconstructed-a monster 42 feet long, weighing about 2,000 pounds, with eight arms extending from its head and two tentacles 20 20 [PAGE BREAK] 30 feet long and eyes eight inches in ter. It is believed that squid sometimes na length of 60 feet. The smaller ones fast swimmers and have been known to amp over rowboats in their paths. It may have been a squid, therefore, which caused such a commotion by jumping across the deck of the schooner in Penobscot Bay. At any rate, no sea serpent, however fearsome, could be any more unpleasant to meet in the open waters than this authenticated monster of the deep. One reason scientists sneer at sea ser- pents is probably because several times they have been the victim of hoaxes. About 1820 a "Dr." Albert Koch produced a gigantic skeleton which he said he had found in Ala- bama. Professor Silliman, a leading natural- ist of his time, commented that it differed essentially from any existing or fossil ser- pent and rather timidly and vaguely said that it just might be the remains of a sea serpent. The pseudo Dr. Koch took his "Hydrargos," which was 114 feet long, all over Europe and made a tidy fortune out of it. It was ultimately shown to be made up of the hones of half a dozen skeletons, probably of whales, ingeniously put together by the exhibitor. Professor Silliman must have felt very much like his name when this report reached him. In 1855 a sea serpent was reported to have been seen in an inland lake in New York State at the town of Perry and was de- scribed as a hideous reptilian creature almost 100 feet long. A company was organized with a capital stock of $1,000 to devise ways and means of capturing it. And then it came out that an enterprising hotelkeeper named Walker had made it out of painted canvas and inflated it to make it float. Parenthetically, mermaids and mermen have always been as popular as sea serpents and they were once supposed not only to have been seen, but to have been captured, baptized into the Christian faith, killed, and eaten. In 1822 a mummified "mermaid" was exhibited in London and 300 people a day paid a shilling apiece to see it. But the ex- hibitor got into trouble and the mermaid vanished for quite a time, only to reappear in the museum of our own Phineas T. Bar- num, where it was shown as the Feejee Mer- maid. Barnum made a neat sum out of her, but later in his life, when he grew pious, he worried a lot about this and other fakes of his, fearing that he would roast in hell for them. Because all the time he knew that his Feejee Mermaid was made of the upper part of a monkey's body joined to the lower part of a fish's tail so cleverly that it was not de- tected by any visitor to the museum. That is the case for and against the sea serpent. Is there such a thing? Is it a serpent, a ribbonfish, a blackfish, a seal, a whale, a sea cow, a marine lizard, a survivor from prehistoric times, or is it simply a figment of the human imagination? It may be appro- priate to quote what Barnum said about hum- bugs and surely no one was better qualified than he to speak on that subject: "If the fact could be definitely determined," he said, "I think it would be discovered that in this wide-awake country there are more persons humbugged by believing too little than too much." And, as has so often been said in another connection, maybe Barnum was right. At least when one begins to study marine life -from a squid weighing a ton or more to a seahorse no bigger than your finger-one cannot help thinking that there may be stranger fish still in the sea than ever came out of it. HERE'S WHY I INSIST ON CERTO ...THE "TRIED AND TRUE" PECTIN THAT TAKES THE GUESSWORK OUT OF JELLY-MAKING says Mrs.F.B. 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