The HMS Daedalus Sea Serpent: A Royal Navy Captain's Monster That Was Never Explained
It was a little before five o'clock in the afternoon of 6 August 1848 when a midshipman aboard HMS Daedalus turned his head toward something in the water. The frigate was homeward bound from the East Indies, sailing up through the South Atlantic between the Cape of Good Hope and the island of St Helena, roughly three hundred miles off the coast of what is now Namibia. Her captain later fixed the position in writing with the flat precision of a man who wanted no argument about where he had been: latitude 24 degrees 44 minutes south, longitude 9 degrees 22 minutes east. The sea was moderate and the sky clear enough to see for miles. Moving toward the ship on a course as steady as a set of rails came a long, dark animal.
Within moments Captain Peter M'Quhae was at the rail. Around him gathered his first lieutenant, the sailing master, a midshipman, the boatswain and the quartermaster at the wheel. Seven men in all watched the animal for about twenty minutes in full daylight, with time to look and with their own ship beside them as a measuring stick.
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