MORE SEA MONSTERS

Taranaki Daily News, 3 September 1934, Page 7

MORE SEA MONSTERS

FIFTY FEET IN LENGTH. SWEDISH SAILOR’S STORY. A remarkable story of an encounter with sea monsters twenty miles off Cape Wrath, on the Scottish coast, was told at Liverpool in July by officers and men of the Swedish steamer Nordia, a vessel of 1316 tons, which had just arrived there. Eight men, including a passenger, claimed to have seen the monsters. They described them as 50ft long and 20ft in girth, with square heads 6ft broad. The vessel, it was stated, approached within 20ft of two of the monsters, which appeared to be basking on the of the sea. But they submerged' before a photograph could be taken. The chief officer, Mr. Edward Olsson, gave a graphic description of the encounter. “Early in the afternoon of June 27,” he said, “I was on watch on the bridge when I saw what at first appeared to be wreckage, similar to the ribs of an old ship, some distance away. I shouted to the captain, who hurried to the bridge accompanied by a passenger, who is principal of a secondary school at Malmo. “ ‘For goodness’ sake keep clear; it may be wreckage,’ exclaimed the captain. But he had hardly spoken when similar huge fins broke the surface of the water some distance away on each side of the ship. I was convinced that we were among unknown monsters, and when a formless mass was sighted about a mile away on the port bow I shouted, ‘Let her go fox it!’ “Leaving the bridge, I climbed on top of the deck cargo at the forecastle head, and as we slowly approached what looked like a huge derelict, I observed a movement similar to that made by an oarsman sculling. ‘lt is alive!’ I shouted And just as Our passenger joined me, the huge mass took shape. “There were two monsters side by side, lazily basking in the sunshine. Each had two huge vertical fins on its-back, standing 3ft out of the water. The fins resembled propeller blades standYJg upright. They moved gently to ana' Iro in a sculling movement when the waves lapped against them. The monsters’ bodies were just beneath the surface of the sea. All eight of us who saw them agreed that they were 50ft in length and tapering toward the tail like an eel. “For a quarter Of an hour the huge beasts were under observation, but when we crept to within 20ft of them they sensed our approach. Probably the propeller disturbed them, for suddenly they gracefully dived head first out of sight We never saw them again.’’ ,