Episode 11 - Sea Monsters

The waves and the wind carry the salt of the sea across the deck of your ship.

Your favorite sight, truly. The open ocean. The expanse of sea far beyond the sight of land.

Beyond the sight of most waters that have been mapped.

The only chart of any use in these parts is drawn by your hand, added to each day.

When you see birds, in the distance, you think that maybe you’ve found land.

Some new place, a land not seen by any eyes.

You call out an order to your crew and prepare to bring the ship about to face the new prospect.

Soon, you can see it. The dark shadow at the top of the water. Land. This is it, you’re chance.

Time to make your mark upon the world and plant a flag on something new.

Sea Monsters.

The heart and soul of naval folklore. The decoration at the edge of maps. The many-formed myths that are featured in stories from the very beginning of sea-faring culture.

Sea Monsters have been a main feature in sea-faring folklore for centuries. They appear in the myths of the ancient Greeks, and they appear in the oldest stories of the Norse. They can be found in the tales of the Babylonians, the Celts, the Philippines, Hindu Myth, Japanese myth, and Peruvian folklore to name a few.

They take many forms. They have been giant serpents, vast dragons, a massive squid or octopus, spirits of the ocean, monstrous whales and gigantic fish.

The sea has always held our attention, our curiosity, and our fear.

And for centuries they held something else. They held monsters.

We filled the oceans with terrible creatures. Vicious and massive. Capable of sinking ships, scattering fleets, and summoning storms.

They were terrible to behold and powerful.

They’ve been described in all shapes. Just like the explanations offered for the stories.

Perhaps they saw massive whales, perhaps the damage to ships was dealt by powerful storms.

Or perhaps there are giant creatures out there. Squid as long as ships. Whales that could scatter fleets. Massive creatures straight from myth or prehistoric times.

I am Andrew Eagle, and today I invite you to join me as we explore the stories of the powerful monsters of the deepest depths and the wild waves.

So, set sail and come Through the Veil.

This is one possibility.

Then the impossible happens. The island, that dark shape… Moves. And then it vanishes beneath the waves.

Some among the crew see it too. For a moment you’re happy. At least you’re not imagining things.

Then you realize the implications. The size of the thing that just moved.

You call out to the crew, to turn around. To change directions. To run.

But it’s on you too fast. First the dark shape under the water. It moves fast. It grows larger and darker as it nears the surface. Then the water swells from the sheer force.

The thing that erupts from the ocean is a mass of tentacle and beak and rubbery, undersea flesh.

The tentacles lifted, high out of the water. Impossibly high. Taller than the main mast.

The crew called out, some prayed. You stared, mouth agape.

Then they came crashing down and your world is splintering wood, shattering glass. That’s replaced by the cold of water and a growing darkness.

That is one possibility.

We have many recorded stories from across time of monsters at sea.

Avienus, a Latin writer, recorded the story of a Carthaginian explorer, Himilco.

Himilco reports he saw “monsters of the deep, and beasts swim amid the slow and sluggishly crawling ships.”

Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed that he encountered a “lion-like monster with glaring eyes” returning from a journey from Newfoundland to England.

And Hans Egede described a creature he claims he saw off the western coast of Greenland.

“A most terrible creature, resembling nothing they saw before. The monster lifted its head so high that it seemed to be higher than the crow’s nest on the mainmast. The head was small and the body short and wrinkled. The unknown creature was using giant fins which propelled it through the water. Later the sailors saw its tail as well. The monster was longer than our whole ship.”

This is one possibility.

You make landfall shortly.

The island is strange and bare as you and your crew step forth from your boats.

The texture of the very land is alien to your feet, and walking along it, you can’t seem to keep your balance. It’s like the island is moving.

But of course, that is crazy. You call out to your crew. Tell them to get a fire going. Tonight you will stay close to the boats.

Tomorrow, you can chart the rest of this island. It is on the smaller side, for an island. But certainly it is larger than a simple sandbar or strand.

Given the lack of trees on the island, your crew breaks a few of the spare oars from the ship’s boats and builds a small fire.

You sit nearby, while they build the fire, and you add to your chart. People will need to know where this place is.

Such a strange place it is. Unlike any other island you’ve ever set foot upon.

Then, as the fire takes and burns, something happens. The island shudders.

For a moment, you’re afraid you’re the only one that felt it. But you notice some among your crew stop talking and look around.

They felt it too. Then it thrashes into motion. You are thrown off the surface, and splash down into the water, as the island rolls under the wave in a mass of motion.

For a few moments it is simply gone, as you and your scattered crew swim toward the boats. Then, that thing comes back. It breaks the surface and turns one of the boats into kindling. A whale. Impossibly large. The size of your ship. No larger. Far larger. As large as an island.

A whale large enough to swallow your ship whole if it wanted.

That is one possibility.

Sea monster corpses have a habit of turning up and being sensationalized. And thus far, they all eventually are debunked in one way or another.

In 1977, a Japanese trawler netted a corpse, decayed beyond normal identification, was claimed to be a plesiosaur corpse. They captured the body off the coast of New Zealand and caused a global sensation. Brazil even made a postage stamp about the event.

Eventually the FBI declared the body was the decomposing carcass of a basking shark.

In 2001, a massive corpse washed ashore in Newfoundland. The creature was unidentified, and stories were abound, until DNA testing confirmed the creature had been a sperm whale.

Another creature washed ashore in Chile in 2003. Described as “a mammoth jellyfish as long as a bus.” Eventually, it was also determined to be the remains of a sperm whale.

There have been cases of strange, boneless globs found decaying in the ocean. Some believe these might be giant octopuses. However, it turns out that these are likely sperm whales as well. When a sperm whale decomposes at sea, there is a common occurrence where the blubber detaches from the bones. This detached blubber turns into featureless whitish masses that are responsible for at least some of these alleged monster corpses.

This is one possibility.

As you approach the island you can tell you were wrong. It wasn’t an island, it was several.

But it’s odd. You wouldn’t believe it if you weren’t seeing it for yourself. The islands, that small cluster… They seem to be moving away from you.

They swirl and shift, slowly sinking and rising.

Perhaps, you think to yourself, not really convinced, perhaps its a heat mirage.

Then they vanish. Each sinking beneath the surface.

Your first mate urges you to turn around, whatever those things are, he wants no part in it.

You start to nod, to command the crew to turn around. Then they return.

This time, you see what it was. Not islands, no… It was the coils of a serpent.

It brings its head from the water near the ship. Towering above you, above the deck, and above the mast, it flicks the air with its forked tongue.

Its red eyes peer down, reptilian and cold. The coiling lengths of its body lifting from the water all around the ship.

It brings its head careening down, and the ship shatters. It moves fast, fast enough that the crew cannot prepare to counter attack, before several of them have been swallowed by the horrible creature.

Each strike lifts a screaming crewman away, and leaves chunks of the ship damaged and missing.

It is gone nearly as quickly, whatever meal it sought has been collected. It leaves you in a sinking ship, with a reduced crew, struggling to stay afloat.

That is one possibility.

Among the most famous sea monsters in historical accounts and myth are Charybdis and Scylla of Homer’s Odyssey.

Both were said to be found in the Strait of Messina. The strait is a narrow channel, and important to shipping.

The story goes that Charybdis lived under a rock on one side of the channel, and that Scylla lived within a larger rock on the other side.

Each controlled half the strait, and thus, to avoid one meant entering the reach of the other.

Charybdis was capable of swallowing a massive amount of water and then casting it back out. The opposing forces in the water would create a whirlpool large enough to drag a large ship underwater.

Scylla dwelt in a cliff across the channel. She would lash down from her rock at any ship passing within her reach, claiming the lives of six crew members on each passing vessel. If a ship did not sail fast enough, she was more than capable of devouring more, although this happens rarely in those stories.

These two make appearances in the Odyssey and many other myths, each offering slightly different versions of them, their parentage, and their forms.

We love to make monsters. We fill our stories with them. We fill our lands with them.

And we fill our sea with them.

Sea Monsters in particular had a way of becoming larger than life. They were massive creatures.

They could crush a ship, swallow people whole, and cause terrible whirlpools.

They were ancient, primordial things. With associations to the apocalypse in Norse myth, with the four elements in Hindu, and everything else in between.

They were fundamental in a way. Fundamental to how sea faring people saw the world.

The oceans were a dangerous place and filled with the unknown.

So, when faced with that seemingly endless expanse, that place far vaster than anything else…

It only makes sense we made monsters to match.

I hope that you enjoyed this episode of Through the Veil, and that you choose to subscribe to hear new episodes weekly on whatever platform you so choose.

Each week we will continue our exploration of folklore, myth, monsters, and magic.

If you enjoy the show, and you have topics you would like to hear covered: Feel free to email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter. You can find me @ThroughVeil

And as always, thank you, for listening.