7 August 1937
Good lord! It’s the 86th anniversary of the sighting of an ACTUAL SEA MONSTER off Nantucket. We know it was true because it got in the papers.
![Old newspaper cutting: Sea Monster Leaves Fisherman pop-eyed — NANTUCKET, Mass., Aug. 7 (UP). — The 1937 sea serpent and marine monster season was officially open today. Fisherman Bill Manville came in here, pop-eyed at what he said he had seen a couple of miles south-east of this island. In Bill’s own words it was [a] green sea monster — which reared its head several times off his starboard bow before turning seaward.](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*FIIEbWjcXAptDtEo_g9Fjw.png)
The incident was reported in the Nantucket Enquirer and Mirror, with further details of both the great beast and pop-eyed Bill.
Bill Manville may have solved the problem of why the bluefish have been fighting shy of Nantucket waters this season. He says there is some kind of a sea monster hanging around the island that must be keeping the bluefish away. He knows whereof he speaks — because he has seen it. When Manville came into this office with his tale Wednesday afternoon his eyes were fairly bulging out of their sockets. “Probably you won’t believe me,” said he, “and folks will think I’m nutty. But it is a fact, there is some great big monster out there.” “What under the sun are you talking about, Bill?” we queried. “There is no such thing as a sea monster or sea serpent.” “Can’t help it! Believe it or not — I saw the thing with my own eves about 9:30 this morning. It was off the east end of the island, about two miles off’-shore from the Gauls, and it certainly was not a whale. It must have been a mile away when I saw it. It was a great big creature, with a terrible looking head, which it seemed to raise 15 or 20 feet out of the water for a moment and then disappear. I saw it appear three times…
The following day, the story was backed up by another fisherman, Gilbert Manter, who was, apparently, described as not a drinker. (I thought there was an air of scepticism about Bill’s story, over and above the whole sea monster business. Bit rude.)
Mind you, Nantucket is a very small place — an island of about 100 square miles just off Cape Cod, shaped like this cat — so everybody knew everybody, I guess, and maybe Bill… [makes universal tipple gesture]
Nantucket also looks like Apostrophe Cat, but that’s not strictly relevant.
Anyway, BY AN EXTRAORDINARY COINCIDENCE, the day after the second monster sighting Gilbert and another man, Ed Crocker, found some vast footprints — four to five feet across — on a beach on the island. See: definitely factual.
Well, Dr W Reid Blair of the New York Zoological Society didn’t think so, the bloody spoilsport, insisting in his highfalutin, fancy-schmancy, scientific way:
Bastard. Well, the sea monster showed him, by turning up on another beach a few days later, looking like… er, this:
Yes, it was, in fact, complete balls. The man who had for a decade been making enormous helium balloon puppets for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade had a holiday home in Nantucket — and a store, Tony Sarg’s Curiosity Shop.
What with this being a small place where everyone knows everyone, they must have known about Tony, so presumably the eyewitnesses and newspaper were all in on it.
Still, everyone got a fun day out…
…and the ‘serpent’ turned up in the Thanksgiving Day Parade as intended.
…as, one year, did Felix the Cat — also courtesy of Tony Sarg.
This may (perhaps rightly) be one of those things that only I’m interested in, but if (for reasons of your own) you want to find out more, you could do worse than start here:
