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[Le Blog Personnel de Professeur Arronax] May 2nd 1867

From: Harry Hayfield <harryhayfield~at~googlemail.com>
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 11:45:43 -0800 (PST)
To: jvf~at~gilead.org.il

Well, here I am in the middle (well, to be honest eastern side) of the
Atlantic Ocean heading, well again, I have no idea. Let me explain how
I got to be here. I suppose it all started last July.

The steamer Governor Higginson owned by the Calcutta and Burnach Steam
Navigation Company encountered a mass (as the captain described it)
five miles off the coast of Australia. Now, everyone assumed it was an
uncharted sandbank and indeed they exist all over the place, however
this mass then shot two columns of water high into the air. So that led
to the natural assumption that this was not a sandbank but an animal of
some kind. Three days later, the same thing was observed. However, not
off the coast of Australia but in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Now, when calculating speed on the sea, you express it in knots. One
knot is one nautical mile an hour, so when I tell you that the distance
between these two observations was 3,827 nautical miles (which gives an
average speed of 53.15 knots), you can see why this raised all sorts of
eyebrows in the nautical community.

But not half as much when a third report came in 15 days later, a
staggering 5,365 nautical miles from the second report. Whilst it had
slowed down a bit, the captain of the Helvetia (owned by the
Compagnie-Nationale) and the captain of the Shannon (owned by the
British Post Office) both reported that this "thing" was at least three
hundred and fifty feet. In other words, larger than any animal alive
today.

There was a slight gap until March of this year when the Moravian
(owned by the Montreal Ocean Company) struck something at night off the
coast of Nova Scotia and would have sunk if not for the strength of
it's hull. Then last month, the Scotia was struck by something and
started to take on water thankfully there was no loss of life and she
struggled into Liverpool Harbour three days late. When the engineers
examined what had happened they were shocked to find a hole in the iron
plating of the hull that was over an inch thick and whatever caused the
hole had reversed!

That really got the public's imagination in a whirl and it was
following that report that I decided to do some investigations for
myself. A couple of days ago, I published this in a scientific journal
after several people criticised me for a publication I did earlier in
the year

“After examining one by one the different theories, rejecting all other
suggestions, it becomes necessary to admit the existence of a marine
animal of enormous power. The great depths of the ocean are entirely
unknown to us. Soundings cannot reach them. What passes in those remote
depths— what beings live, or can live, twelve or fifteen miles beneath
the surface of the waters—what is the organisation of these animals, we
can scarcely conjecture. However, the solution of the problem submitted
to me may modify the form of the dilemma. Either we do know all the
varieties of beings which people our planet, or we do not. If we do NOT
know them all—if Nature has still secrets in the deeps for us, nothing
is more conformable to reason than to admit the existence of fishes, or
cetaceans of other kinds, or even of new species, of an organisation
formed to inhabit the strata inaccessible to soundings, and which an
accident of some sort has brought at long intervals to the upper level
of the ocean.

If, on the contrary, we DO know all living kinds, we must necessarily
seek for the animal in question amongst those marine beings already
classed; and, in that case, I should be disposed to admit the existence
of a gigantic narwhal. The common narwhal, or unicorn of the sea, often
attains a length of sixty feet. Increase its size fivefold or tenfold,
give it strength proportionate to its size, lengthen its destructive
weapons, and you obtain the animal required. It will have the
proportions determined by the officers of the Shannon, the instrument
required by the perforation of the Scotia, and the power necessary to
pierce the hull of the steamer.

Indeed, the narwhal is armed with a sort of ivory sword, a halberd,
according to the expression of certain naturalists. The principal tusk
has the hardness of steel. Some of these tusks have been found buried
in the bodies of whales, which the unicorn always attacks with success.
Others have been drawn out, not without trouble, from the bottoms of
ships, which they had pierced through and through, as a gimlet pierces
a barrel. The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris possesses one
of these defensive weapons, two yards and a quarter in length, and
fifteen inches in diameter at the base. Very well! suppose this weapon
to be six times stronger and the animal ten times more powerful; launch
it at the rate of twenty miles an hour, and you obtain a shock capable
of producing the catastrophe required.

Until further information, therefore, I shall maintain it to be a
sea-unicorn of colossal dimensions, armed not with a halberd, but with
a real spur, as the armoured frigates, or the ‘rams’ of war, whose
massiveness and motive power it would possess at the same time. Thus
may this puzzling phenomenon be explained, unless there be something
over and above all that one has ever conjectured, seen, perceived, or
experienced; which is just within the bounds of possibility."

I felt I had to put that last bit in just as a way of saying "Yes, I
know that I am a professor of natural history in France, but we have to
keep our eyes open to anything!" partially expecting a hail of letters
denouncing me. What I did not expect was this letter from the American
Secretary of State for the Marine:

To M. ARONNAX, Professor in the Museum of Paris, Fifth Avenue Hotel,
New York.
SIR,—If you will consent to join the Abraham Lincoln in this
expedition, the Government of the United States will with pleasure see
France represented in the enterprise. Commander Farragut has a cabin at
your disposal. Very cordially yours, J.B. HOBSON, Secretary of Marine

which I hope explains what I am doing on board a ship.

--
Posted By Harry Hayfield to Le Blog Personnel de Professeur Arronax on
1/02/2010 07:12:00 PM

Received on Sat 02 Jan 2010 - 21:45:51 IST

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