The Big Book of Mysteries. Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe

They launched a boat to get a better view, and managed to get close to it without, apparently, being seen by it. The men who observed it said that it was eel-like. They were close enough to see that its huge body was covered in scales, each of which was about fifteen centimetres long by seven or eight centimetres wide. The longer part of the scales pointed along the length of the sea-serpent’s body, which was black in colour. When the monster became aware of the observers’ boat, it turned toward them and opened its huge jaws. The witnesses were close enough to see its great teeth all too distinctly, and decided to row as fast as they could toward shore.

      After this narrow escape in 1849, there were many other sightings in St. Margaret’s Bay. Some of the men who had observed at least one of the sea-serpents closely wondered whether there were two at least — perhaps a breeding pair.

      Ten years later, in 1855, something in the sea off Green Harbour was described as “a hideous length of undulating terror” and more detailed accounts of it published in Ballou’s magazine reported that it made a noise like escaping steam and moved through the water with a series of vertical curves. It was also credited with malevolent eyes protected by bony ridges, and with jaws full of dangerous looking teeth.

      Another important Nova Scotia sighting was not recorded in the Zoologist magazine until 1847, although the events had actually taken place in 1833. Henry Ince was the ordnance storekeeper at Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the time. He recorded that on May 31 of that year he had been one of a party of five on a fishing trip in Mahone Bay, where intriguing Oak Island and its famous unsolved Money Pit mystery is also situated. The morning was cloudy, the wind in the south-southeast and rising. The other four onboard were Captain Sullivan, lieutenants Malcolm and MacLachlan from the Rifle Brigade, and Artillery Lieutenant Lyster. They saw what Henry Ince described as “a true and veritable sea-serpent,” about thirty metres in length and undulating through the water.

      Another episode occurred on October 26, 1873, when a “Kraken” in the guise of a giant squid attacked two sturdy Canadian fishermen in a small boat in Conception Bay — an area not noted for its depth of water. They were just on the north side of the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland when the weird marine beast attacked them. Lesser men would have succumbed, but the powerful Canadians fought back courageously. They came away victorious and still very much alive — with a severed tentacle as a souvenir. They estimated that, including its tentacles, the beast had been a good fifteen metres long overall, with a three-metre body and a metre-long head.

      Canadian lakes — like Loch Ness in Scotland — are often deep and mysterious, and have been the source of as many monster sightings as the seas and oceans. Geologists cite that what are now technically lakes may once have been connected to the sea, isolated from greater bodies of water by geological upheavals resulting from movements of the tectonic plates. Many of these very deep lakes lie between the Rockies and the Pacific, and Lake Okanagan, home of the Ogopogo — also known as Naitaka — is typical of them.

      Modern interest in Ogopogo sightings dates from 1854 when a traveller was taking horses across Lake Okanagan. In his account of the attack by the aquatic monster, he said it was like being seized by a gigantic hand that was trying to pull him and his horses under the water. He was powerful and agile enough to fight his way out of the deadly grip of whatever lived in Lake Okanagan, but his horses fell victim to it. Some years later, another traveller, John McDougal, was crossing the lake with horses when he was attacked in a very similar manner. Once again the man survived but his horses were lost.

      Another sighting was reported by a timber transporter named Postill in 1880. As he was constructing a timber raft, Postill said he was certain that whatever lived in the mysterious lake came up out of the depths and watched him working on the raft.

      In that same year, another witness, Mrs. Allison from Sunnyside, saw something resembling a huge log floating in the lake — but it was travelling in the opposite direction from the prevailing wind and current.

      One of the saddest and most sinister episodes recorded in the annals of Lake Okanagan is the unsolved disappearance of Henry Murdoch, a powerful swimmer who was practising for an upcoming marathon. He had planned to swim from the old Eldorado Hotel to the Maude Roxby Bird Sanctuary, a distance of some sixteen kilometres. His good and trusted friend John Ackland was rowing a pilot boat for him. As John took a few moments rest and bent forward out of the wind to light a cigarette, Henry vanished. Despite an intensive police search and two days of dragging the lake for his body he was never seen again. The water in that location was barely three metres deep and beautifully clear; yet Henry Murdoch had disappeared without a trace. It needs to be emphasized that he was a very strong swimmer and a professional lifeguard, so an accident was nearly impossible. Unless something very big and powerful had taken him, there was no way to account for his sudden disappearance. But how does that square with the water being clear and barely three metres deep at that point?

      More recently, Ogopogo was described as resembling a telegraph pole with a sheep’s head at one end. He was also said to have had a forked tail, only one-half of which came out of the water as he moved. The Vernon Advertiser from July 20, 1959, carried an interesting and well-authenticated account of an Ogopogo sighting by R.H. Millar. He had been cruising on the lake at about eight knots when he saw Ogopogo through his binoculars, about eighty metres away. He was surprised by its speed, as it was going twice as fast as the ship, and making about fifteen or sixteen knots. The snakelike head was only a few centimetres above the water, and Millar noted several undulating humps. He guessed — although he couldn’t see them — that the monster had fins or paddles of some kind underneath.

      More recent sightings from the Gellatly Road area, near the Gellatly Cemetery, suggest that Ogopogo is indeed real and lurking somewhere in the Okanagan Lake area. Very wisely, the Canadian authorities have declared Ogopogo to be a protected species under the Federal Law and Fisheries Act and the Wildlife Act.

      In the early 1930s, when Nessie was hitting the world headlines following various reported sightings in Scotland, British Columbia newspaper editor Archie Willis christened a formidable Canadian sea monster Cadborosaurus — soon to be known as Caddy. The earliest reports of Caddy go back centuries and cover the sea area between Alaska and Oregon. Marine biologists and oceanographers have drawn up scientific criteria that points to something real and classifiable inhabiting those waters. Caddies seem to vary in length, with an average of around ten metres, and their bodies are serpentine — like gigantic eels. The head is variously described as resembling a horse or camel — definitely not snake-like or fish-like. The neck is long, and the body adjoining it is either humped or undulating — perhaps both. There are powerful flippers, which must be highly effective as Caddies have been clocked at more than thirty knots when swimming on the surface.

      The northwest Pacific coast, where Caddies are regularly sighted, lies close to an extremely deep submarine trench, an area where a creature of most any size could live undetected for millions of years. Is Caddy a survivor from the distant past, like the coelacanth? It seems highly likely. He also appears to have close relatives in Wales and in Cornwall, England.

      A creature that was given the name Morgawr was reported off the Cornish coast in 1975. Morgawr was closely associated with the work of the famous Doc Shiels and his daughters, all of whom were at that time widely recognized and acknowledged as expert and knowledgeable practitioners of the “Old Religion.”

      The basic physical descriptions of Morgawr, the Cornish sea monster, are very similar to the descriptions of Nessie, Caddy, and other large aquatic beasts reported as broadly resembling plesiosaurs. There are, however, some strange and intriguing metaphysical questions raised by the apparent nexus between Old Religion practitioners and their monster-summoning spells on the one hand, and the reported sightings of monsters subsequent to those “magical works” on the other. In this connection, however, it is wise to remember the importance of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy — “after this, therefore because of this.”

      Lyall