People must remember a strange, mysterious, unexplained incident at sea in 1866.Not to mention the various rumors that aroused coastal residents and world public opinion at that time, here I only talk about the special excitement of ordinary sailors.Importers and exporters in Europe and America, captains and owners of ships, naval officers of various countries, and governments of these two continents have all paid great attention to this matter. The story goes something like this: Not long ago, some large ships encountered a "monster" at sea, a very long object, shaped like a spindle, which sometimes glowed with phosphorescence, and was much larger and faster than a whale. much.

The facts recorded in many logbooks concerning the appearance of this thing (such as the shape of this thing or this creature, the incalculable speed with which it moves, the amazing power it transfers, its special ability that seems to be born, etc. etc.), roughly the same.If the thing is a cetacean, it is vastly larger than the whales biologists have ever classified.Cuvier Lacebert, Dumery, Catfage, these biologists - unless they have seen it, that is, unless they have seen it with their own eyes - will not admit the existence of such a monster . A compromise between the results of many observations--leaving aside the underestimation that the thing is only two hundred feet long, and accepting the exaggeration that it is a mile.Three miles in breadth and length,—we can be sure that this strange creature, if it existed, was much larger than ichthyologists admit.

Since this thing exists, and the fact itself is undeniable, then, due to human curiosity, it is not difficult for us to understand what kind of commotion the appearance of this monster will cause throughout the world.As for saying that this is absurd nonsense, no one will agree with it. For, on July 20, 1866, the Governor Higginson of the Calcutta-Burnash Steamboat Company, five miles east of the coast of Australia, encountered this swimming mass.Captain Buck, at first thinking that it was an unknown reef, was about to determine its position, when suddenly two jets of water spewed from this inexplicable object, which shot with a splash one hundred and fifty feet into the air.So, unless there were geysers on the reef, what the Governor Higginsun had in front of her was an as-yet-unknown marine mammal that spewed jets of bubbly water from its nostrils.

On July 23 of the same year, the Christobalgoro of the West Indies-Pacific Steamship Company also encountered such a thing in the Pacific Ocean.Three days after the Viceroy Higginson saw the monster, the Cristobalgoro also saw it at a distance of seven hundred miles, from which it can be seen that this strange cetacean can escape from this place with a predatory speed. transfer from one place to another. Fifteen days later, at a distance of two thousand miles from the above-mentioned place, when the Helvetia of the National Steamship Line and the Shannon of the Royal Mail Line met on the Atlantic sea between America and Europe, At 42° 15' north latitude and 60° 35' west longitude, I saw this monster at the same time.According to the results obtained by the two ships at the same time, it is estimated that the length of this mammal is at least more than 350 feet (about 106 meters), because the Shannon and the Helvetia are connected, and both of them are still alive. Shorter than that, the two ships are only a hundred meters long from nose to tail.The longest whales, however, like those that frequent the waters off Julenmark and Onjulik in the Aleutian Islands, are no more than fifty-six meters, and anything longer than that has never been greater. Never had.

The constant stream of news, observations made by the transatlantic Berrel, an encounter with the monster by the Inman Steamship Vietina, written by the officers of the French second class Normandy The records, the very precise calculations made by Fitz-James, the senior naval staff, on the Sir Creed, all of these were indeed sensational at the time.In countries with relatively impetuous nationalities, everyone uses this matter as a joke, but in serious and down-to-earth countries, such as Britain, the United States and Germany, they are very concerned about this matter. In every major city, the monster became a household event.It was sung about in the coffee houses, ridiculed in the press, played on in the theaters.Rumors just had the opportunity to fabricate all kinds of anecdotes from this monster.In some of the small-circulation press there were reports of all sorts of grotesquely gigantic animals, from the white whale, to the dreaded "Moby Dick" of the arctic seas, to the colossal "Kraken"—the monster The tentacles of a fish can entangle a five-hundred-ton boat and drag it down to the bottom of the sea—you name it.Some people even go so far as to quote from the classics, or move out ancient legends such as Aristotle and Pliny's views (who admit the existence of such monsters) or move out of the Norwegian fairy tale of Bishop Pontupidan, Paul Egide's account. , and Harrington's report; which leaves no doubt, that he had seen, in 1857, aboard the Castilan, a serpent of a kind which had hitherto been seen only on the seas visited by the Constitution. see.

Thus, believers and skeptics arose in the learned community and in the scientific press, and the two factions debated endlessly. "Monster Questions" excite people.The journalists who thought they knew science and the literati who always thought they were talented started a fire, and they spent a lot of ink in this memorable pen battle!A few even shed two or three drops of blood, for someone turned the pen against the sea serpent on some haughty fellow. For six months, the debate continued.Each other is justified and each insists on its own words.The popular tabloids of the time were full of contentious articles attacking authoritative papers published by the Brazilian Academy of Geography, the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin, the British Federation of Learners, or the Smithsonian in Washington; Discussions in Cosmos magazine, Piedman's Izvestia and scientific news in the major French and other national newspapers.These talented writers willfully misinterpret a line of Linnaeus often quoted by the opposition: "Nature makes no stupid things"; beg everyone not to believe the monster fish of the North Sea, the sea snake, "Moby Dick" and the crazy Do not negate nature by the existence of other monsters invented by sailors.Finally, one of the most popular editors of a well-known and bitter satirical newspaper hastily published an article dealing with this monster; The last blow, it ended.So wit triumphed over science.

During the first months of 1867, the problem seemed to be dead, and would never be restored.But at this time, people heard of some new incidents.The problem at hand is not a scientific problem to be solved urgently, but a danger that must be carefully tried to avoid.The problem took on a completely different aspect.The monster became an isle, a rock, a reef, but it was a galloping, elusive, unpredictable reef. On August 5, 1867, the Moravian of the Monterey Navigation Company sailed at night at 27° 30' north latitude and 72° 15' west longitude. The starboard side of the ship hit a rock, but there was no map It is recorded that there is this rock on the sea in this area.Aided by the wind and propelled by four hundred horsepower, the speed of the ship reached thirteen knots.There is no doubt that if the hull was not of high quality and strong, the 236 passengers it carried from Canada would have taken the Moravian to the bottom of the sea after it was hit.

The accident happened just before dawn at around five o'clock in the morning.The seamen on watch immediately ran astern of the ship; they watched the sea very carefully.They saw nothing but a maelstrom more than 600 meters wide—as if the water had been violently impacted—and they only noted the exact location of the accident.The Moravian sailed on, seemingly unharmed. · Did it hit a reef, or a sinking wreck?There was no way of knowing then.Later, I went to the dock to check the bottom of the ship, only to find that part of the keel was broken. This fact is very serious in itself, but it would probably have been forgotten as quickly as many others if the same incident had not occurred three weeks later under the same circumstances.The collision that followed was enough to arouse widespread repercussions simply because of the nationality of the injured ship and the prestige of the company to which it belonged.

The name of the famous English shipowner Cunard is unknown to everyone.This shrewd entrepreneur founded a mail shipping company as early as 1840 and opened up the route from Liverpool to Halifax. round wooden boat.Eight years later, the company was enlarged to include four ships of 650 horsepower and a capacity of 1,820 tons.Two more years later, two more ships with larger horsepower and load capacity were added. In 1853, the Cunard Company continued to obtain the privilege of shipping government mail, and successively built the Arabian, Persian, China, and Spit. The Asia, the Java, the Russia, these are the first-class clippers, and the largest of them all, compared with none in the sea except the Great Eastern.By 1867, the company had a total of twelve ships—eight paddle-wheeled and four dark-wheeled.

The reason why I want to briefly introduce the above situation is to let everyone know the importance of this shipping company.It is famous all over the world for its well-run business.No seafaring enterprise has been managed more shrewdly or more successfully.In twenty-six years, Cunard ships have made two thousand voyages across the Atlantic, and not once did they miss their destination, not once were they delayed, not once was a letter lost, a man or a ship lost. , so "despite France's efforts to steal its business, the passengers are unanimously willing to take the Cunard's ship, which can be seen from the official statistical documents of recent years. Knowing this situation, no one should be surprised An accident with one of the company's steamboats would have had such a huge repercussions.

On April 13, 1867, the sea was calm and the wind was favorable. The Stetia was sailing on the sea at 15° 12' west longitude and 45° 37' north latitude.It was propelled by a thousand-horsepower engine at a speed of thirteen and a half knots per hour.Its wheels turned in the sea, perfectly fine.Its draft at that time was 6 meters 70 centimeters, and its displacement was 6,685 square meters. At 4:16 in the afternoon, while the passengers were eating refreshments in the lobby, there appeared to be a slight impact aft of the Scotia, a little behind the port wheel. The Scotia did not hit something, but was hit by something.It is not a hammering instrument that strikes it, but a drilling instrument.This collision was very slight. If the crew in charge of the cabin hadn't run to the deck and shouted: "The ship is going to sink, the ship is going to sink!" Perhaps no one on board would have cared. The passengers panicked at first, but Captain Anderson quickly calmed them down.The danger doesn't happen immediately.The Scotia is divided into seven compartments by waterproof boards, and it doesn't care about a few leaks at all. Captain Anderson immediately ran down to the hold.He found out that the fifth room had been flooded by seawater, and the seawater was immersed very quickly, which proved that the leak was quite large.Fortunately, there is no steam oven in this room, otherwise the fire would go out. Captain Anderson ordered the ship to stop immediately, and ordered a diver to go into the water to inspect the damage to the hull.After a while, he knew that there was a big hole two meters long at the bottom of the boat.Such a breach could not be closed, and the Scotia had to go on despite her wheels being half submerged.At that time, the ship was still 300 nautical miles away from the Klia Gorge, and it was three days late for the ship to enter the company's wharf. During these three days, people in Liverpool were anxious about it. The Scotia was erected, and the engineers began to inspect.They could not even believe what their eyes saw.Two and a half meters below the waterline of the hull, a very regular equilateral triangle gap was exposed.The scars on the iron sheet are very neat, even the drilling machine can't chisel so accurately, the sharp instrument that made this crack must not be made of ordinary steel, because this guy is slamming forward with amazing force, piercing through After cutting through the four-centimeter-thick iron sheet, he was able to use a very difficult backward movement to free himself and escape. This is roughly what happened in the latest incident.As a result, this once again stirred up public opinion.From this time on, all seafaring wrecks of formerly unknown causes were now charged to the account of this monster.This grotesque animal was then responsible for the sinking of all ships.Unfortunately, the number of shipwrecks is quite large. According to the statistical yearbook, about 3,000 ships are lost every year, including sailboats and steamships. ! Regardless of whether the monster was wronged or not, people blamed it for the disappearance of the ship.Because of its existence, the sea traffic between the five continents is becoming more and more dangerous, and everyone insists on clearing the sea of ​​this terrible whale monster at any cost.