St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1878-08-09
JOHNsBURY, VT, FRIDAY, AUG. 9, 1878.

Many curious and intensely interest
ing stories are told of encounters at sea
with the devil fish, monster of the
deep, but not until recently have scien-
fists given them any credence. The
facts of subsequent history have thrown
a volume of light on a once mysterious
subject. The following condensed in
cidents we give for the benefit of our
readers who must be their own judges.
Modern professors of zoology, however,
look upon them with more plausibility
than ever before:
Captain Jean Magnus Dens, who is
credited as being man of truth and
veracity, who had made several voy-
ages to China as master of a trader,
told De Montfort that while on a voy-
age crossing from st. Helena to Cape
Negro, he was becalmed, and took ad-
vantage of the enforced idleness of the
crew to have the vessel scraped and
painted. While three of his men were
standing on planks slung over the side,
an enormous "squid" or devil fish, rose
from the water and threw one of his
long arms around two of the sailors,
whom it tore away with the scaffOlding
/ on which they stood. With another
arm it seized the third man, who held
on tight to the rigging and screamed for
help. His shipmates ran to his assist
ance, and succeeded in rescuing him by
cutting away the creatures arm with
axes and knives, but he died delirious
on the following night. The captain
tried to save the other two sailors by
killing the animal, and drove several
barpOOns into it; but they broke away,
and the men were carried down by the
monster. The arm cut off is said to
have been twenty five feet long, and as
thick as the mizen mast, and to have
suckers on it as large as saucepan lids.
There is not the slightest doubt in our
mind but the story OF the sea captain
was true, although at the time it was
published it was treated as fable, for
the shortest arms of the devil fish ex-
hibited by Mr.. w. G. Coup, at the time
it was captured in September, 1877,
were eleven feet long, and seventeen
inches in diameter, whilst the longest
tentacles were fully thirty feet long.
These require to be doubled or extended
twice the length of the tank in which
the monster is exhibited. This is done
in order to lessen the trouble and ex-
pense of handling and transporting it.
For centuries there has existed in the
orient strong belief in the power of
these marine animals to sink ships and
drown their crews. Ancient pictures
exist in China and Japan of giant
caphalapods embracing junks of hun
dreds of tons burden, and seizing terri
fed sailors. Lawrence Oliphant in his
.'China and Japan,n in describing a
| Oh g g.,
size groups of figures carved i'll wood,
one of which represented group OF
women bathing in the sea, when one of
them had been caught in the folds of a
devil fish, the others in alarm escaping,
leaving her to her fate. Peron, the
French zoOlOgist, saw at sea, in 1901
near Van Dimen's Land, Il ''squid" ia
sepia) large as barrel with arms seven
feet long and six inches in diameter.
Quoy and Gaimard, French naturalists,
saw one near the equator, dead and
half eaten by the sharks, that could not
have weighed less than 200 pounds.
Captain Rang, saw in mid-ocean one OF
a new species, whose ''body was as
large as hOgshead." Molina, in his
'natural history of Chilli" describes Il
monster (sepia tunicata) EARNED with
hooks in its suckers" which weighed
$50 pounds. Paulsen, a scientist, de-
scribes ii monster cast on shore on the
Danish coast, having a total length OF
body and longest tentacles of thirty
nine feet. A crew of the French dis
patch steamer AlectOn, saw one in the
ocean near Teneritfe, in 1861, with a
deep red color, having body eighteen
feet long, without reckoning the arms,
which must have been, according to the
anatomy of the species, over fifty feet
in length. In endeavoring to capture
it the rope cut through and severed the
flesh. NJ. Berthelot, French consul at
Teneriffe, saw the fins aud posterioI
portion on board the Alecton, and sent
a report of the event to the Paris Acad-
emy of Sciences. The museum at
Copenhagen, the faculty of sciences at
Montpelier, the museum at Triest, the
museum of the Royal College of Sur
geons in London, the st. Johns museum
at New Foundland, and the geological
department of Yale college, all contain
fragments merely of the devil fish, in
none of which is there perfect speci-
men, nor in any one of these rare col
lections is there specimen so large as
that exhibited by Mr.. Coup, the founder
of the New York aquarium.