The Monongahela Monster
And finally, it would be quite unthinkable to end this article without discussing the highly controversial case of the Monongahela monster. For if the case is genuine (and not a hoax, as some authors have suggested), one ship successfully obeyed the imperious command of this article's title--by obtaining for scientific scrutiny the head of a sea serpent! On January 13, 1852, while in latitude 3° 10'S and longitude 131° 50'W the whaling ship Monongahela of New Bedford encountered an enormous serpentine creature longer than the 100-ft. ship itself, and just under 50 ft. in diameter, with a 10-ft.-long alligatorlike head whose jaws contained 94 teeth (each approximately 3 in. long and recurved like a snake's).
During a titanic struggle, the ship's sailors sought to capture their monstrous visitor by harpooning it; the next morning its lifeless carcass, brownish-yellow and 103 ft. 7 in. long, rose to the surface of the sea. Although giant snakes are not believed nowadays to be responsible for any of the various different types of sea serpent reported over the years, this particular specimen did possess some distinctly ophidian characteristics, including its recurved teeth, a lower jaw whose bones were separate, and two lungs of which one was notably larger than the other. However, it also exhibited some highly un-snakelike features, such as a pair of whale-like blowholes, and four paw-like projections of hard, loose flesh.
Taxonomic considerations notwithstanding, it was clearly impractical to attempt to preserve the gigantic creature's entire carcass--so the sailors hacked off its ferocious-looking head, for retention as absolute proof of this astonishing beast's reality. The Monongahela's master, Captain Charles Seabury, prepared a detailed account of the whole incident, including a full description of the creature itself; on February 6, the Monongahela encountered the brig Gipsy, journeying to Bridgeport, so Seabury handed his account to the Gipsy's master, Captain Sturges, who promised to hand it into Bridgeport's post office when the Gipsy arrived there. Presumably he kept his word, because newspaper accounts of Seabury's report appeared, including one in the London Times for March 10, 1852.
And this is where, for over a century, the story ended--because nothing more was heard of either the sea serpent head or the Monongahela carrying it. Accordingly, some cryptozoologists discounted the whole affair as an elaborate hoax--until 1959, which saw the publication of Frank Edwards' book Stranger Than Science. This revealed that the ship carrying back Seabury's account had actually been the Rebecca Sims, with a Captain Gavitt as its master, and that Seabury's Christian name was Jason, not Charles. In addition, Edwards had learned that many years after Seabury's account had hit the headlines, the name board of the Monongahela had been discovered on the shore of Umnak Island in the Aleutians. So what had happened to the ship? As no other trace of it has apparently been found, if the incident was indeed genuine did some catastrophe occur during its continuing voyage that consigned the Monongahela and its entire crew to the bottom of the sea--thereby returning its unique cryptozoological cargo from whence it had come, the unknown ocean depths?
As with so many other cases on record within the ever-increasing chronicles of the sea serpent, the chances are that we will simply never know.
