Drummond’s diary, via a communication to The Log of Mystic Seaport (Dash 2010). Drummond provided drawings (Figure 3) of the creature from Lt. Drummond (1848) was also published, and a correspondent claiming to be an officer of the Daedalus later gave a basically confirmatory account (‘An Officer.
An excerpt for the day of the encounter from the diary of Lt. Three professional drawings of the animal ( The Illustrated London News 1848 reproduced in Figures 1 and 2 here), authorized by Captain M’Quhae, were published. This occurred in the South Atlantic, some 300 miles from the coast of present day Namibia. M’Quhae, later described in a published official report (M’Quhae 1848a) as an enormous serpent, at least sixty feet long. Daedalus encountered what its captain, P. On August 6, 1848, at about 5 pm, the frigate H.M.S. The Daedalus animal can finally be identified. There is no doubt that something remarkable passed by that ship on an August afternoon, and the Daedalus case has remained one of the most famous and puzzling maritime mysteries. We have the advantage today of greater knowledge of large marine vertebrates than was available at the time, and we have two important contemporary drawings by a Daedalus witness that were not published until 1997. A particularly influential sighting occurred from the British naval vessel Daedalus in 1848. During the nineteenth century, various supposed sightings of the creature-mainly in the Atlantic-lent it some public and scientific credibility as a real animal (Heuvelmans 1968).
The sea serpent was once little more than a monster of Norwegian folklore. This was produced by a professional artist with advice from Captain M’Quhae.įigure 2: Two more drawings (“A” above and “B” below) by M’Quhae’s artist, as as published in The Illustrated London News. Figure 1: An iconic drawing of the Daedalus animal, as published in The Illustrated London News.