encounters a baby sea serpent
when he became separated from the fishing schooner Grace L. Fears in
a blinding snow on the Burgeo Bank in 1883.
Blackburn rowed himself and his dead dory mate sixty miles to the
Newfoundland coast with his hands frozen to the oars and survived to
become a Gloucester legend.
In spite of having lost all his fingers and half of each thumb, Blackburn
later made two solo trans-Atlantic voyages in his sailboat Great
Republic. It was during one of these voyages in 1901 that Blackburn
logged this encounter.
miles an hour, suddenly I saw something just abaft the starboard beam lashing
the water into foam. I stood up and saw what looked like a coil of very large
rope. I hove the wheel down and trimmed the sheets in sharp by the wind.
The boat would not fetch it on that tack, but passed within 35 or 40 feed to the
leeward of it.
As I draw near I could see that it looked like a large snake, but had a tail more
like an eel. It was fully 12 to 15 feet in length. It was holding in its mouth
either a small turtle or a good-sized fish, with which it was lashing the water
into foam. Its head moved so rapidly from side to side that I could not tell its
shape, but am inclined to think it resembled that of a serpent. The tail and
parts of the head that I could see plainly appeared to be smooth and of a light
lead color.
I put a running bowline in the end of the mainsheet, and when the boat got far
enough by to fetch it on the next tack I hove the wheel hard down, and with
every hair on my head like so many belaying pins, filled away on the other
tack, taking the end of the mainsheet in my hand, and as the boat passed
within eight or ten feet of it I tried to lassoo it. But the rope must have struck
its head, for without a bit of fuss it sank from sight.
I tacked ship and stood across the spot where it sank, and lay to several
minutes with my jib to windward in hopes it might rise again, but I saw no more
of it. It was no shark, for a shark of that length would be at least as big around
as a five gallon keg, whilst this was no stouter than my mast, which is five
inches in diameter. It must have been a baby sea-serpent."
THIS EXCERPT TAKEN FROM "LONE VOYAGER" BY JOSEPH GARLAND