FT260

The 19th century was the golden age for sea serpents. Many of the most vivid and credible reports of “sea monsters” come from 19th-century sailors – sometimes in such detail, with such eloquence, with such verisimilitude, that only the most cyn­ical sceptic can dismiss them as the products of overactive imaginations or hoaxes. Victorian scientific journals and magazines regularly carr­ied reports of sea serpents being shot at, captured and even – from a certain point of view – being turned into knife handles. Yet around the turn of the 20th century, the number of reports began to decline.

The 19th-century scientific literat­ure offers ‘rational’ explanations for sea monsters.