Unsolved Mysteries of the Sea

by Lionel

  … Singing: “There dwells a loved one,

  But cruel is she!

  She left lonely forever

  The kings of the sea.”

  In co-author Lionel’s poetry anthology, Earth, Sea and Sky, there is a different, happier conclusion to the merman’s story, entitled “The Merman’s Wife Returns.”

  There was an answer to the merman’s call,

  A faltering step towards the beckoning sea.

  “Wait for me, children. Husband, wait for me.”

  The voice they knew and loved, but faint with pain;

  Her children skim the waves to reach the shore.

  Her merman husband bounds across the sands,

  Sweeps her into his arms — his bride once more —

  Strong fingers close around her bleeding hands.

  “What have they done to you, my love, my life?”

  “They could not understand our unity.

  They hated me. They said I was unclean,

  A thing apart, because I lived with you.

  They would not let me go back to the sea,

  Our home of pearl and shell beneath the waves,

  Our lovers’ wonderland of coral caves …

  But I broke free … Somehow I found the strength

  To pull my hands clear of their iron bands …

  Their prejudice, their bias and their hate …”

  The merman gently kissed her bleeding hands

  And held her very close, their children too.

  They understood the cost of her escape.

  Rejoicing in the power of her love …

  Safe in their cool, green sea they headed home,

  Their family re-united, strong, complete …

  And in the merman’s heart the ocean sang.

  When myths and legends are as persistent as the many stories of mermaids told and retold over thousands of years in song and story, they cannot be dismissed without serious investigation and analysis. A few years before Matthew Arnold was born, another educationalist, William Munro, a schoolmaster from Scotland, wrote a letter to the Times, in which he described in great detail a sighting he himself had made of “a figure resembling an unclothed human female, sitting upon a rock extending into the sea, and apparently in the action of combing its hair, which flowed around its shoulders, and was of a light brown colour …” Munro watched the strange being for some three or four minutes before it slid off its rock and down into the sea. He continued watching carefully, but it never reappeared.

  The London Mirror of November 16, 1822, reported that John McIsaac from Corphine in Kintyre, Scotland, had made a very similar sighting in 1811. Like the creature that Munro saw, McIsaac’s mermaid had long hair that it tended to comb continually.

  Other early nineteenth-century mermaid observers included a girl named Mackay, whose description of what she had seen along the Caithness coast tallied closely with William Munro’s account in his letter to the Times.

  Were dugongs like this ever mistaken for mermaids?

  Eighteen hundred years before either Munro or Mackay reported their mermaid sightings in Scotland, Gaius Plinius Secundus — better known as Pliny the Elder — was born in AD 23 in what was then called Transpadane Gaul (now part of modern Italy). Before his tragic death caused by volcanic fumes from Vesuvius in AD 79, Pliny had written Natural History, which endured as a standard reference work for centuries — until rational, scientific biologists began to express doubts about what they considered to be dubious myths and legends that Pliny had incorporated along with his factual material. In his mermaid section, Pliny wrote: “Mermaids are not fables. They are, in fact, as the artists depict them. Their bodies, however, are scaly and rough, even where they seem most human. A mermaid was seen by many witnesses close to the shore. It was dying, and the local inhabitants heard it crying pitifully.”

  Henry Hudson, famous for his heroic, but tragic, seventeenth-century voyages in quest of the Northwest Passage, names two of his ship’s company, Thomas Hilles and Robert Rayner, as sighting a mermaid in an area then known as Novaya Zemlya.

  Sir Richard Whitbourne, who originally came from Exmouth in Devonshire — famous two centuries later for the trail of mysterious footprints crossing the estuary of the River Exe — was practically a contemporary of Hudson. Whitbourne reported sighting something similar to a mermaid in 1610. His report is especially significant in that it describes whatever he saw as having blue streaks around its head, resembling hair, but he was adamant that these streaks were definitely not hair.

  A Danish Royal Commission set out to make a serious investigation of the merfolk phenomena in 1723. Not far from the Faroe Islands, members of the commission reported that they had actually seen a merman. It submerged as they approached and then surfaced again, staring at them with a horrible, fixed intensity. This so unnerved the commission that they ordered their skipper to withdraw. Their apparent retreat caused the creature — whatever it was — to give vent to an almighty roar and submerge again, like an animal that has triumphantly defended its territorial boundaries against intruders.

  Writing about merfolk in The Natural History of Norway (1752–3) no less a dignitary than Bishop Erik Pontoppidan himself declared: “In the Diocese of Bergen, here, and also in the Manor called Nordland, there are many honest and reliable witnesses who most strongly and positively affirm that they have seen creatures of this type.”

  Various reports of the infamous Amboina mermaids are also worth reporting in outline. Now named Ambon, the Indonesian island once known as Amboina, or Amboyna, is about ten kilometres off the southwestern coast of Seram Island. Its highest point is the summit of Mount Salhatu, and although Ambon is not entirely free from earthquakes, there is no volcanic activity. It does, however, have hot gas vents, called solfataras, as well as hot springs. The climate is tropical and rainfall is heavy. There are many varieties of fish in Teluk Bay, and some of them are bizarre, which might have given rise to the mermaid sightings.

  Dutch writer Francois Valentijn compiled The Natural History of Amboina, which was published in 1726 and contained accounts of mermaids as well as illustrations purporting to show them. He calls them Zee-Menschen and Zee-Wyven. Valentijn’s illustration had already appeared in 1718 in a book called Poissons, Ecrivisses et Crabes … des Isles Moluques. The artist responsible for the picture in both volumes was Samuel Fallours, who held the rank of official artist to the Dutch East India Company.

  The description accompanying Fallours’s illustration said that the creature was about five feet long and resembled a siren. After being captured, the unlucky Zee-Wyf was kept in a barrel of water. Not surprisingly, declining to eat anything, it died about a week later — after making a few faint mewing, squeaking noises that reminded its captors of a mouse.

  Tales of the mermaid of Amboina reached the illustrious ears of Tsar Peter the Great and George III of England, and Valentijn was interrogated further. In response to the Imperial interrogation, he came up with an account of an East Indies Company officer who had seen a pair of the strange merfolk swimming together near Hennetelo, a village in the Administrative District of Amboina. After several weeks these two creatures were seen again — this time by forty or more witnesses. They were described as being greyish green and shaped like human beings from the head down to the waist, below which their bodies tapered like the tail-halves of large fish.

  On co-author Lionel’s Channel 4 U.K. TV series, one of the mysteries investigated was an object purported to be a wizened, mummified mermaid, but under the pathologist’s knife it turned out to be carved entirely from wood. A theory advanced at the time was that these carved figures were meant as votive offerings by Polynesian and other fishing peoples and were cast into the sea at appropriate places to please the gods, so ensuring a profitable catch and a safe return for the fishermen.

  Other mermaids in various sideshows and exhibitions where admission fees were charged almost always turned out to have been carefully crafted by skilled taxidermists
from the upper body of a monkey and the rear end of a fish.

  A rather more detailed and convincing historical account comes from Orford in East Anglia in the U.K., where medieval fishermen apparently caught a merman in 1204. In those days, the port of Orford on England’s east coast was relatively prosperous, Henry II having built a castle there because he was highly suspicious of the unpredictable Hugh Bigod of Bungay. The event is related by Ralph of Coggeshall, a monastic chronicler of that epoch.

  According to Ralph’s version of the case, a group of sturdy East Anglian fishermen were having a struggle to get their nets on board because of a large creature that had somehow become entangled with their catch. When the net finally lay in the bottom of their boat, what looked very much like a man was glaring up at them from among the squirming fish. In Ralph’s account, the merman was unclothed but covered in hair — except for the top of his head, which was bald. Another very human feature was his long beard, which was described as straggly. The Orford men tried to talk to their captive, but his best replies were little more than grunting noises. Not knowing what else to do with him, the fishermen took him to the castle and handed him over to the warden, Bartholomew de Gladville. Gladville wasn’t too sure about him either and decided to keep him there as a prisoner. The merman responded positively to a raw fish diet, but still refused to speak — almost certainly because he couldn’t. It was noted by his jailers that when he was offered a piece of fish, he squeezed the liquid from it first and drank it.

  In desperation, Gladville resorted to torture to try to get some intelligible words from his strange, aquatic prisoner, but even when he was hung upside down the merman would not, or could not, talk. On being taken to church, he showed neither knowledge of, nor interest in, religion. The humane side of Gladville coming to the top, however briefly, he ordered his men to sling nets across the harbour mouth and allow the merman to swim for a little while — probably in the hope that if their prisoner felt happier, he might say something. For a swimmer of the merman’s ability, the line of nets presented no barrier at all. He simply dived under them and vanished out to sea. After one or two triumphant appearances above the waves, he left the Orford area and was never seen again.

  The nature of his real identity remains an unsolved mystery today.

  What might still provide clues to the enigma of the merfolk is what is alleged to be the actual grave of a mermaid in the cemetery at Nunton in the Hebrides, off the coast of Scotland. She was found dead on the beach in 1830, and was described in the traditional way — human to the waist and fish from there downwards. The human part apparently seemed so human that the sympathetic islanders felt that a decent burial was called for. With the scientific advantages of modern DNA analysis, that grave could well be worth very careful investigation.

  John Smith — associated with Pocahontas in the rather controversial story of his rescue by the beautiful young Native American princess — also features as a reporter of romantic mermaid sightings. In the West Indies in 1614, Smith claimed that he had seen a mermaid so attractive that he had at first mistaken her for a human girl bathing. Closer inspection, however, revealed that she had luxuriant green hair, and in Smith’s own phrasing “from below the waist the woman gave way to fish.”

  Christopher Columbus is also credited with sighting mermaids. He reported seeing no fewer than three of them “leaping out of the water,” but it seems much more likely that what Columbus actually observed were dugongs, since he added rather disappointedly that they were “not so fair as they were said to be.”

  Ovid, the Roman poet also known as Naso, who was born in 43 BC, suggested imaginatively that mermaids were born from the burning galleys of the defeated Trojans. Where did they really come from?

  Could the manatee and the dugong be all there is behind the innumerable mermaid legends? Or is there much more to all those reported sightings? The myths and legends of the merfolk may well be connected to the strange and ancient accounts of various marine deities such as Oannes, or demigods like the Tritons, which persist in various shapes and sizes in religious writings all over the world. These mysterious aquatic entities form the subject of our next chapter.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Who Were the Water Gods?

  Ancient Babylonian aquatic deity: Ea or Oannes.

  Academic folklorists and scholars specializing in the evolution and development of myths and legends frequently suggest links between the more recent mermaid stories and the ancient theology of various water divinities. Berosus of Chaldea, writing three hundred years before the Christian Era, described something he believed had risen from the Erythrean Sea. Berosus was intelligent, highly educated, and worked as an astronomer and a priest. His description of Ea or Oannes suggests that this extraordinary being had two heads, one underneath the other. Does this suggest diving gear to the twenty-first-century mind? Oannes also possessed human feet as well as a fish’s tail — which also suggests a special aquatic suit or costume of some kind. Later carvings of Oannes, or Ea, show him with a humanoid upper body and a fish tail — rather like traditional depictions of Neptune or Poseidon.

  Oannes was an exceptionally pleasant and helpful god when compared to many of his contemporaries in the Assyrio-Babylonian pantheon. Oannes taught people arts and sciences, helped with healing and fertility, and was a thoroughly benign mentor to humanity. He rose from the sea every morning and vanished back into it at night — suggesting that in the minds of some of his worshippers, at least, he was associated with the sun’s rising and setting.

  His feminine counterpart, Atergatis, was also known as Derceto. Early representations of her — like those of Oannes — showed a clearly humanoid body with a fish cap on the head and a fish-skin cloak, again reminiscent of modern sub-aqua gear. Later representations were closer to the modern mermaid style: human upper body and fish tail. Her priests had a keen eye for business and issued fishing licences in her name in return for an appropriate fee. Just as Oannes was tenuously associated with the sun, so Atergatis was a lunar goddess. The ebb and flow of the tides was known to be associated with the moon, so a lunar goddess like Atergatis would logically be associated with the sea.

  Some later, variant myths describe her association with a human lover by whom she had a daughter, Semiramis. She seems, despite much historical controversy, to have been a genuine historical figure, and to have grown up to become a very great and politically effective queen of Assyria. According to mythology, Derceto — or Atergatis — had displeased Aphrodite, alias the Assyrian Ashtaroth, the goddess of love, who had in revenge caused Derceto to fall madly and unwisely in love with a young Syrian named Caystrus. After the birth of Semiramis, Derceto, feeling ashamed, humiliated, and betrayed, killed Caystrus and left their baby girl among the acacia bushes. Derceto then went back under the water and stayed there for a long time.

  Miraculously, the baby was discovered by doves who fed her with scraps of food — much as Elijah was fed by ravens in the biblical account. Finally discovered and rescued by kind-hearted shepherds, the little girl was given the name Semiramis, meaning “she who came from among the doves.” Raised by the caring shepherds, she grew into a very beautiful young woman.

  King Ninus (interestingly, his name is derived from the Assyrian word nunu, meaning fish) sent one of his trusted senior officers, Menon, to inspect the royal flocks. He fell in love with the exquisite Semiramis and took her home with him to Nineveh, where he married her.

  It was Menon’s misfortune a few years later that the aging Ninus saw and fell in love with Semiramis — a parallel perhaps with the great Hebrew king David and his infatuation with Bathsheba. Ninus offered Menon one of his own beautiful daughters in exchange for Semiramis. Menon declined. Ninus then threatened to blind, torture, and kill him. Faced with an offer he couldn’t refuse, Menon reluctantly sent Semiramis to Ninus — and then committed suicide.

  Fragments of historical evidence suggest that when Ninus died (perhaps Semiramis assisted in the process?) she bec
ame an extremely powerful and effective ruler. Historians are not in agreement, but there is enough evidence of the reign of Semiramis to make it more than merely myth or legend. One touching detail recorded by some historians is that she had truly loved only Menon, and even in old age she still wore and treasured a necklace that he had given her long ago when he first found her among the shepherds who had brought her up.

  Was Derceto (Atergatis) perhaps also a historical person? If so, what was the real significance of her strong association with the moon and the sea, and did she have any extraordinary paranormal powers? Was it her genetic inheritance that made Semiramis so intelligent and effective?

  In addition to major marine deities, the ancient theologies peopled their pantheons with sirens and water nymphs, beautiful to look at and accomplished singers and musicians. Sirens were depicted as part woman, part bird, rather than as part woman, part fish.

  In mythology they were the daughters of the river god Achelous, and their numbers are given as anywhere from two to eight. Their names indicated the charm of their alluring voices: Aglaophone, for example, meant “the brilliant voice,” and her sister Molpe’s name meant “song.” In their notorious encounter with the wily Odysseus, of Trojan Horse fame, they sang a lyric that would have turned the head of any hero: “Draw near, wonderful Odysseus, greatest and most admired of the Achaeans. Pause in your journey and come to visit our beautiful island. We know everything that happens in the world, and we know of your great deeds at Troy.”

  Odysseus had thoughtfully blocked the ears of his crew with wax and ordered them to tie him to the mast so that he could hear the wonderful siren sounds without succumbing to their fatal temptations.

  The Sirens finally met their match when the Argonauts sailed past their island of treachery and death. Orpheus, the master musician and singer, whose powers vastly excelled theirs, defeated them, and, overwhelmed by his superior skills, the Sirens were turned into rocks — all except for Parthenope. She leapt into the sea and was drowned. Her body, according to legend, was washed ashore at the site of the future city of Naples.