Unsolved Mysteries of the Sea

by Lionel

  In several mythologies and religious legends — including Cambodian ones — the Asparas were beautiful and seductive female water deities who played exquisite flute music and seduced scholars and academic researchers in order to distract them from studies that might have led them too close to secret truths that the gods preferred to conceal.

  A colourful piece of ancient Chinese creation mythology concerns a quarrel between two gods: Gong Gong, the god of water, and Zhurong, the god of fire. A violent, catastrophic battle took place between them, and finally Gong Gong was hurled down from the heavens, which began to buckle under the strain. Shamed by defeat, he attempted to destroy himself by charging at the mountain that supported the sky — causing further major structural problems for the ancient cosmos!

  Japanese and Chinese mythology also included sea dragons as well as dragon-wives and mermaids. The Japanese Ningyo, for example, were quasi-human, but had only a human head — rather than a full upper torso — mounted on a fish body. In Polynesian legends, the hybridized form of merperson was a combination of human form and porpoise. These aquatic semi-divinities were worshipped under the title of Vatea.

  Greek and Roman mythology, to which so much contemporary culture is still heavily in debt, includes Neptune-Poseidon as the massively powerful sea god — often depicted with a human upper torso and a magical trident in one hand. As he rears up commandingly out of the waters he controls, many pictures show his lower body ending with a huge fish’s tail. Being one of the most powerful of the ancient deities, Neptune-Poseidon could transform himself at will, and his traditional part-fish structure didn’t seem to inhibit his procreational activities with human females — or with goddesses and demigoddesses of the Greco-Roman pantheon. His son Triton, who was half fish like his father, and his daughter Rhode, the patron goddess and protectress of the island of Rhodes, were born from his relationship with Amphitrite.

  Triton is associated with the conch shell symbol, from which he produces a sound so terrifying that even giants run away when they hear it. Triton uses this magical conch shell to raise storms and huge waves, or to calm the sea afterwards.

  As time passed, the mythology developed and expanded and the Tritons became a whole class of beings — not just one individual. Even stranger than the half-fish, half-human Tritons were the Centauro-Tritons (also known to academic mythologists and folklorists as Ichthyocentaurs). These complex beings were a mixture of horse, fish, and human being.

  Real specimens of Tritons were said to have been on display in Rome and in Tangara during Roman times, according to evidence provided by the old Greek travel writer Pausanias. Born in Lydia, he toured Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Epirus, and further afield. Writing between AD 143 and 180, Pausanias typically began his descriptions of the cities he visited with a short history, followed by an account of the monuments and buildings he saw, as well as references to local folklore, legends, and religious ceremonies. His careful and accurate descriptions of the places he visited so many centuries ago coincide very closely with what we know today of those landmarks that have stood the test of time and are still around. Pausanias is, therefore, regarded as a reliable chronicler. What did he really see when he described Tritons?

  There are also interesting references in mythology and legends from this period, and earlier periods, to the Nereids. These beautiful and benign sea maidens were the daughters of Nereus, a kind of “Old Man of the Sea,” but totally different from the malevolent creature who almost murdered Sinbad the Sailor. Nereus is associated with the Mediterranean in general and the Aegean in particular. His mother is Gaia, the great Earth goddess, and his father is Pontus — really just a personification of the sea itself. Kind and wise old Nereus married Doris, an Oceanid sea nymph. She herself was the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, who were Titans. Doris became the mother of Nereus’s fifty daughters — the Nereids — but apart from that did not get overly involved in the activities of the Greek pantheon. The Nereids and their father have often been credited with saving ships from wreck and their passengers and crews from death in the Aegean Sea — which is their particular responsibility. The Nereids are sometimes depicted as totally human — although sea dwellers. At other times they appear in the human-and-fish shape of classical mermaids and traditional water deities.

  The U.K. also has its fair share of sea deities and aquatic demigods. What the Greeks and Romans thought of as Nereids and Oceanids were called Merrymaids in Cornwall and Merrows in Ireland. Like the Greek sea maidens of the Mediterranean and Aegean, these Irish and Cornish water nymphs were extremely beautiful. In the legends they wore “magical caps” that enabled them to pass through the water — and there are some researchers who see in the “magical cap” an advanced form of diving helmet. Were these amazing sea nymphs using a highly advanced scuba technology rather than magic? If they were, where had they come from: Atlantis, Lemuria, or some mysterious, extraterrestrial location?

  The Isle of Man had its own special water god named Mannan, who was very similar to the Irish sea god Manannan mac Lir. Fishermen often prayed to them for a safe trip and a good catch:

  Manannan, Son of the Sea,

  You bless our island home,

  Bless us and this boat.

  May we go out well and come in better.

  Although primarily a sea god, Manannan was also semi-historical. He was believed to have lived in a castle on a hill and to have been buried on the island.

  The legendary sea deities from the waters around the Shetlands have ancient traditions that hint even more strongly at technological rather than magical explanations: they are said to be able to remove their marine-animal “skins” (close-fitting diving suits?) and to walk around on the land in a normal human way.

  The Scandinavian water deities were known as the Neck, and were highly unpredictable. The males were called Havfrue; the females were Havmand and Havfine. In Germany, the mermaids or water nymphs and sea goddesses were called Meerfrau and Melusine. These latter had double tails.

  In Russia and other maritime Eastern European cultures, the two best known water deities, or merpeople, were the Rusalka — malevolent female water nymphs who lured men to their deaths by drowning — and the vast and frog-like male Vodyanoi, who devoured their prey in the water.

  France is not without its strange allusions to sea deities and curious paranormal marine beings. King Merovée, founder of the remarkable Merovingian Dynasty, reigned from 448 to 457, and was officially the son of King Clodion the Long-Haired. There are persistent rumours, however, to the effect that Merovée’s mother was raped, or seduced, by a very unusual and mysterious sea being referred to as a Quinotaur. Was he named Merovée because the first syllable of his name, mer, indicates the sea? The question of who, or what, a Quinotaur might really have been is a controversial and complicated one: it resurrects the whole range of speculation about intelligent, amphibian aliens, or technologically advanced Atlanteans. Does the taur syllable of Quinotaur indicate a bull-god, like the one in the Minoan culture, or even the golden calf that Aaron permitted the Israelites to make and that caused so much trouble when Moses came back down the mountain?

  Water gods like Merovée’s Quinotaur and dangerous water goddesses like the Sirens are ubiquitous in myth and legend, and worldwide reports of them go back for millennia. Some researchers would suggest that the tales are based on remnants of an ancient technology, perhaps Atlantean, perhaps extraterrestrial. Others look for cryptozoological explanations, while open-minded supernaturalists give serious consideration to the possibility that these mysterious water beings really do possess assorted anomalous, magical, superhuman powers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Monsters of the Deep

  Ancient Greek artwork showing Herakles fighting Ketos, a sea monster.

  Two of the most famous ancient Greek accounts of sea monsters are remarkably similar: in the first, a fearless hero rescues Princess Hesione from the monster that Poseidon had sent to terrorize Troy; in the second, a
nother hero, Perseus, rescues Andromeda from a parallel fate. So reports of marine monsters go back a very long way. Early Greek poetry, for example, referred to the battle between the mighty Herakles (Hercules) and one of the terrifying Ketea — the awesome sea monsters under Poseidon’s control and sent out by him much as gangland bosses send out their hitmen today. According to these classical accounts, the creatures were insatiably hungry and resorted to cannibalism when there was no other prey readily available. The poet Oppian referred to them frequently and in detail in his work Halieutica — a treatise on fishing. His book warns that they appear most frequently in the Iberian Sea off the coast of Spain. These ancient Ketea are frequently described as more elongated and serpentine than normal fish.

  There is a powerful and persistent nexus between Greek history and mythology and monsters of the deep. One of the most intriguing stories told about Alexander the Great is that he was an intrepid pioneer of the deep and that inside a specially constructed glass diving bell he watched a sea monster so vast that it took three full days to pass his submarine observation post.

  Reports of sea monsters are also right up to date. The authors were called in by BBC TV to investigate some very interesting and accurate reports of sightings in 2003 in Pembroke Dock, Wales, U.K. We interviewed four of the eyewitnesses there and then set out for a couple of hours in the Cleddau King — a superb boat for the job, fully equipped with high-tech electronic search gear.

  Co-author Patricia with Skipper Alun Lewis aboard his high-tech search boat Cleddau King.

  The superb Cleddau King with ultra-high-tech electronic search gear aboard her.

  Co-author Lionel with eyewitnesses Lesley John and David Crew at the Shipwright Inn at Pembroke Dock.

  Our first witness was David Crew, landlord of the Shipwright Inn, number one Front Street, Pembroke Dock, Wales, U.K. This is what David told us:

  On Wednesday, March 5, 2003, at lunchtime, I was in the kitchen. My barmaid, Lesley, was behind the bar, and a few of her customers, Peter, Tori, and Philip were in the pub. Lesley looked out of the window overlooking the Milford Haven Estuary and saw something resembling a large fin smashing through the water. She drew our attention to it and when we came out we saw something that we can only describe as a sea serpent. I would say that it was a long, dark, serpent-shaped object about five to six cars’ length. Peter, one of the witnesses, quoted it as having a diamond-shaped head. He saw that diamond-shaped head rear briefly out of the water, and it disappeared again just as quickly. I would say it was five or six feet in diameter.

  Lesley herself said: “It was still when I first saw it. It was just motionless in the water at that point. It was a nice bright, clear day. The thing was strange and definitely alive. I felt very shocked when I saw it. It seemed to be a big sea monster.”

  The next witness was Peter Thomas, a customer who had been in the Shipwright Inn at the time whatever-it-was was sighted. This is Peter’s statement:

  Lesley drew my attention to something she saw in the river and I went to the window and looked out. It was something I estimated to be about ten metres in length. You could see a sort of diamond-shaped head, or what appeared to be a diamond-shaped head, out of the water and you could see the rest of it going back about thirty feet: a body moving through the water probably about the size of a beer barrel in diameter.

  At this point, I asked Peter to sketch what he’d seen.

  When Lesley brought it to my attention, I went to the door and looked between the wall of the port and the Martello tower. You’ve got the wall down there and the tower this end. All I could see was a diamond-shaped sort of head just above the water — not erect or anything — and then all this turbulence back behind it. It was moving in the river at a fair amount of speed. It was obviously something moving, not anything drifting. … In a matter of less than a minute it was gone … clean out of sight behind the port wall. It was travelling at about seven or eight knots.

  Co-author Lionel pointing to the area where Peter Thomas and the other witnesses saw the monster.

  Co-author Lionel with eyewitnesses Tori Crawford and Peter Thomas in the Shipwright Inn at Pembroke Dock.

  Eyewitness Tori Crawford then said:

  When Lesley told us about the fin, we all proceeded to go outside. We were all together, but I was one of the last ones to get outside. There it was, just as Dave said. It was between three and five car lengths long, and there was definitely a big shadow in the water. I only saw a little bit of the diamond head, not a lot of it — what we think was the head anyway. But it was something that I’d never seen before. Never! It certainly wasn’t seaweed put together, or anything like that.

  Asked to draw a picture of what she’d seen, Tori provided more information as she sketched it:

  I was one of the last ones to come out, so I hardly saw anything of the head myself. But you have the wall there and the Martello tower here. And it was as if the creature had bumps like this: the large one in the middle and then a small one just coming off here. It looked like a mountain moving along, but it definitely had a smaller bit towards the tail part, and a smaller bit towards the head. The turbulence coming from the back was unbelievable; it made you think it had flippers.

  Eyewitnesses Tori Crawford and Peter Thomas in the Shipwright Inn.

  Many years’ experience as an investigator provides a professional researcher with the ability to weigh the reliability of witnesses to this kind of reported phenomena. Having spent several hours in their company, we are convinced that the witnesses we interviewed were very sensible, rational people making clear and accurate reports about what they had seen in the Estuary by Pembroke Dock. Precisely what the creature was remains a mystery. Possibilities range from some large, unknown species of marine animal to a miniature submarine manoeuvring in a difficult, shallow, and restricted waterway. There are Ministry of Defence activities in this area from time to time, and unconventional new designs of underwater craft may be tested here occasionally.

  Reports of sea monsters from the past — centuries before human technology reached a point where the first relatively modern submarines appeared — would seem to require other possible explanations, unless some of the most ancient sea monster myths and legends owe their origin to underwater craft from Atlantis, Lemuria, or the advanced technology of visiting extraterrestrial amphibians.

  We live in an incredibly strange universe, and the more we learn of its wonders and mysteries, the stranger and more inexplicable it becomes. What we like to refer to as “good, old-fashioned common sense” can sometimes be a million miles wide of the mark, but it is always worth looking for simple, commonsense answers before venturing into the misty and uncertain vistas of Von Daniken Land. William of Occam’s famous medieval philosophical Razor taught much the same set of truths! His basic principle was that we should never make more assumptions than the minimum necessary to explain any phenomenon being studied. It’s also referred to as the Principle of Parsimony. Despite its medieval origins it underlies much of our contemporary thought. Occam’s Razor recommends that we metaphorically shave off anything that isn’t absolutely essential to explain the phenomenon we’re investigating — or the model of it that we’re building.

  Although the widely and persistently reported Loch Ness phenomena do not strictly relate to sea monsters, the Loch Ness sightings are too important to be omitted from any serious study of marine cryptozoology. If sea monsters really exist, a detailed survey of Loch Ness will provide the researcher with valuable clues.

  A report from as long ago as the year 565 records how Saint Columba, while travelling up to Inverness on a missionary journey to the Picts, rescued a man in danger on Loch Ness. The original account reports that “a strange beast rose from the water.” The geological history of Loch Ness suggests that it was at one time connected to the North Sea, a fact that would support the argument that members of the plesiosaur group are reasonably strong claimants for being the Loch Ness monster — if there is one at all.
To add detail to the 565 account, it was said that Columba and his followers knew that a local swimmer had been fatally mauled by something big and dangerous in the Loch. Despite this, one of Columba’s followers had valiantly started swimming to retrieve a boat. Suddenly, a huge creature reared up out of the water and made towards the terrified swimmer. Some early accounts, which give the monster its Gaelic name, Niseag, describe it as resembling an enormous frog. This would link it with the vodyanoi of Finland.

  Columba himself ran fearlessly into the water to save his companion, shouting sternly to the monster, “Go no farther! Touch not thou that man.” Columba was a powerful man in mind and body, as well as a good and courageous one. Whether it was the saint’s forceful voice or some paranormal power of holiness surrounding him, the monster decided that on this occasion it had more than met its match and that discretion was definitely the better part of valour: it retreated ignominiously. Could the creature even have been a thought-form like the Tibetan tulpa, which retreated when attacked by a powerful mind like Columba’s?

  The Loch is about 35 kilometres long and 250 metres deep: a spacious enough home for the largest sea monster. Duncan McDonald, a diver, was working there in 1880 (albeit with the rather primitive equipment then available). As he carried out his salvage operations on a wrecked ship in the Loch, he claimed that he saw the monster swimming past him. In his report he paid particular note to the monster’s eyes, saying that they were small, grey, and baleful. They gave him the impression that annoying or interfering with Nessie would not be prudent.