Sleepy History - Sea Monsters: What Did Sailors Actually See?

Episode Date: October 11, 2026

✨Sleepy History is written and narrated by humans. ✨ Narrated By: Simon Mattacks Written By: Jacobe Duarte Siel Trace the fascinating history of sea monsters, from the Norse World Serpent and the kraken to Trunko and modern globsters. Includes mentions of: Science & Nature, Science Fiction, Literature & Literary History, Underwater Scenes, Animals, Death, Swimming, Myths & Legends, Loch Ness Monster #History #Sleep #Loch #Ness #Myths #underwater #creatures About Sleepy History Explore history's most intriguing stories, people, places, events, and mysteries, delivered in a supremely calming atmosphere. If you struggle to fall asleep and you have a curious mind, Sleepy History is the perfect bedtime companion. Our stories will gently grasp your attention, pulling your mind away from any racing thoughts, making room for the soothing music and calming narration to guide you into a peaceful sleep. Want to enjoy Sleepy History ad-free? Start your 7-day free trial of Sleepy History Premium: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sleepyhistory.supercast.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Have feedback or an episode request? Let us know at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠slumberstudios.com/contact⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sleepy History is a production of Slumber Studios. To learn more, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.slumberstudios.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG PrivateWealth.com. Sea monsters. No matter where you look in the world, the historical record contains some mention of one. Since time immemorial, the ocean waves have inspired enduring mysteries and legends. about what lives down there in the dark. But what are the origins of the half-elephant,

half-fish creature in the waters of Thailand? And when did the Kraken emerge as perhaps the most recognizable beast of the sea? Tonight we'll explore some of the stories, both fiction and non-fiction, that humans have told about sea monsters. We'll learn about the history behind some of these creatures, and how these stories have shifted and changed over time.

So just relax and let your mind drift as we explore the sleepy history of sea monsters. On medieval maps, dragons, sea monsters and other mythological creatures can be found lurking in the corners and margins. Here be dragons is a phrase you may have heard used to denote an area of the world that had not yet been explored, but where dangers were thought to lurk. While we may now view this practice, as a little silly,

at the time very few cultures knew enough about the world to create a complete map. Certainly they couldn't be sure that dragons didn't exist somewhere, and it wasn't just dragons either. The tabular Poitingerial, or Poitinger map warns of dog-headed men in certain regions. The Borgia map from 1430 says of Asia, Here are serpents so large that they could eat an ox whole.

The Carter Marina warns of an elephant-like creature with enormous teeth called a morseus that lives in Norway. The last one turned out to be real. out to be real. But it's not a mythical monster, it's a walrus. As cultures exchanged information, the monstrous became mundane. Creatures that were the subject of stories and myths were either debunked entirely, or, in the case of the morses, shown merely to be animals that people were not familiar with. For the most part, it seemed like monsters weren't real after all, and slowly much of the world moved on from hunting for dragons and other mythical beasts, at least on land.

But there was one region where people never stopped believing that monsters might be lurking. The ocean. Perhaps this was on account of the sheer size and volume of water our ocean. contain. Even today, we have not explored the majority of the Earth's oceans. Certainly, not the deepest depths, like the Mariana Trench, where no light can penetrate. Even more interesting is that the ocean does actually contain animals that we might consider to be real-life monsters. Take one look at a giant squid, or a blue whale. Their sheer size is incredible. Imagine if you lived in a different era, one where monsters were believed to be real, or folk tales and myths, were a daily part of your life. A person with that kind of upbringing might have seen the curved fin of a shark

cutting through the water before disappearing beneath the waves. What would they have thought? of that encounter, believed they'd narrowly avoided a monster, or perhaps even a god. Not all sea monsters were seen as true monsters by the people who believed in them. Some of them were seen as gods or as other divine beings. Some of the oldest written documents we have include explicit descriptions of sea monsters, many of these documents are religious in nature. We can look at, for example, the Baal cycle. The Baal cycle is an ancient myth written on six incomplete tablets that were found in the ruins of Ugarit, an ancient coastal city in what is now northern Syria. The Baal cycle is more than 3,000 years

old, but there's evidence that Ugrit was inhabited as far back as 8,000 BCE. So we don't really know how old the story truly is. It may have spent thousands of years as a major part of the oral tradition of that region, before being written down. In the Baal cycle, a god named Baal struggles against Mott, the god of the underworld. In the first two tablets, however, Baal is mainly focused on fighting Yam, the god of the sea. Yam senses servants to fight Baal, and one of these servants is Tanin, a sea monster with a long serpentine body, sometimes depicted as having two tails.

Baal defeats Tanin with the help of his sister Anat. So, as we can see here, in this. myth, Tannin is not just a monster. He's also a divine being who serves a God. Where the story gets even more interesting is that the word Tannin sticks around as part of the languages of the region. The word Tannin is found in Hebrew, Arabic and Syriac. In all those languages, it means roughly the same thing, sea monster. In fact, The word Tannin appears in the Hebrew Bible, or Tannac, 14 times, although it's not in reference to a specific monster, but rather a category of monsters.

In Genesis, the Tannin are specifically listed among the creatures God creates on the fifth day. In some English translations, Tannin means great whale. But when you know the story of Tannin and the story of Tannin and the first. the Baal cycle, Great Whale doesn't seem like an accurate translation. Other sea monsters in the Tanakh also fall under the category of Tanin, specifically the Leviathan and Rehap. Both of these creatures are symbols of primeval chaos. Both are depicted in the Hebrew Bible as having qualities we would think of as being draconic or serpentine. Long bodies, scales, multiple heads, and even the ability to breathe fire.

Interestingly, it is believed that God will slay Leviathan and serve its body to the righteous as part of a great feast at the end of time. The implication of this is that Leviathan is an immortal being that is still a swimming in the oceans to this day. This is where we see a pattern emerging, gods defeating sea monsters that represent chaos. This myth is common in the history of sea monsters. It doesn't stop with the Tanak and the Baal cycle. We can also look at the Anuma Elis, the Babylonian creation myth dated to about 3,000 years ago. In this story, we meet Teammat, a god who represents the primordial sea.

A quick aside, if you enjoy Dungeons and Dragons, the name Teamat is probably familiar to you. In D&D, Teamatt is portrayed as a five-headed dragon god, who is the queen and mother of the other dragons that appear in the game. Depending on the addition of D&D you play, she's either a three-haired. lawful evil or chaotic evil. But back to the original Tiamat. The Babylonian Tiamat shares some similarities with the sea monsters we've discussed so far. She is large, powerful, has a tale and represents chaos. In her story, she is also integral to the creation of the entire world. Tiamat is the mother of the entire first generation of Babylonian gods. She mates with Abzu, who represents the groundwater, in contrast to Tiamat, who represents the ocean.

These first-generation gods are rather noisy and obnoxious, which leads Abzu to try and destroy them. However, he underestimates their power and is himself. destroyed. Teammat is enraged by this and begins a war against her own children. She brings forth monsters to fight for her, but ultimately she is defeated. The child that lands the killing blow is one of the storm gods, either Enlil or Marjouk. Teammat's body is taken apart and used to build different parts of the cosmos and world. Her weeping eyes become the sources for the two major rivers of the region, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Her tail becomes the Milky Way.

These are just some examples of sea monsters that are either gods or linked to gods in ancient mythology. But there are many, many more. We can't go in depth into all of them, but we can touch on a few. The Makara, which is a legendary sea creature from Hindu mythology, is made from the combination of a land animal and an aquatic animal. Makara are interesting because they regularly appear as a Vahana or vehicle for certain Hindu gods. For example, the river goddess Ganga rides a Makara to get from place to place. In ancient Norse mythology, Yeomangander is an unfathomably large sea serpent or worm that lives in the world's sea.

It's so long that its body encircles the entire earth, with the head biting the tail where the two ends meet. It's also known as the world serpent for this reason. Norse mythology contains a vision of the apocalypse known as Ragged. Ragnarok. Ragnarok is viewed as inevitable, something that will happen no matter what, and must happen in a certain way. One of the signs of the start of Ragnarok is when the world's serpent releases its tale. And of course, we can't fail to mention the biblical story of Jonah, who is eaten by a whale sent by God. Although, interestingly enough, the term whale was

not used to describe this particular sea monster in the original story. Instead, it was the Hebrew word for large fish. This actually led to many centuries of discussion among scholars, many of whom believed that the creature that ate Jonah was a real species of fish that was swimming around in the ocean. And that brings us to our next category of sea monsters. The monsters we've just discussed are related to divinity. But not all sea monsters are divine. In many parts of the world, sea monsters were viewed as real creatures, much like the large fish that ate Jonah. This was especially true in the era before easy, long-distance travel, where stories would slowly make their way from one place to the next, changing as they passed from person to person.

A good example are the two ancient Greek sea monsters that lived on either side of a narrow chowl of water. They were known as Silla and Carybdis. Supposedly, these two monsters lived within an arrow's range of each other. Sailors attempting to use the strait would need to be especially careful, because navigating to avoid one might put them in the path of the other. A Byzantine encyclopedia describes Silla as having the appearance of a beautiful woman up to the eyes, with six dogheads on each side and the body of a serpent. Caribdis isn't often described in texts, but one thing that distinguishes her from Silla

is that she produced large whirlpools that could pull in ships and drag them beneath the waves. The historians and writers of the ancient world placed Silla and Caribnus in several of the best-known epics of the era. Homer's Odyssey features an encounter between the monsters and Odysseus. Silla appears in Ovid's metamorphosis as well, and both are referenced in Virgil's Enid. In Virgil's account, we actually get a specific location for these two months. monsters, the Strait of Messina, which is between mainland Italy and Sicily. In fact, there is a coastal town named after Silla in the Italian province of Calabria. Another example of a sea monster that people believed existed in real life is the Devil Whale.

Devil whales have appeared in some form or another in writings that go back thousands of years. The basic myth is the same. A devil whale is a whale of enormous size that can swallow entire ships. The whale is so big, in fact, that when it sleeps, it looks like a small island. Sailors will often spot the back of a devil whale and believe they've found a place to rest. But once they light a fire on the creature's back, thinking it's solid ground, the devil whale wakes up. Hurt and angry, the whale attacks the ship, dragging it to the very bottom of the sea. The bottom of the sea was viewed as synonymous with hell by some writers.

This is where the name devil whale comes from. Versions of this story exist in the fictional Sinbad the Sailor story cycle, but also appear in writings that are men who are men who are to be taken as truth. St. Brendan the Navigator claimed to land on the back of a whale in the 6th century CE. In the 13th century, William the Clark warned sailors to beware of strange landmasses in the water because they could be a devil whale in disguise. A similar story appears in the writings of Al-Kasweeney, a 13th century Persian professor. However, in the In this version of the tale, the whale is replaced by an enormous tortoise. In Japan, there is an entire class of supernatural beings that can either cause trouble or help humans.

They are known as Yokai. Yokai can be ghosts, demons, trickster beings and also sea monsters. One yokai known to Japanese sailors is the Umibozu. a giant human-like spirit with completely black skin. Umi-Bozu literally means sea priest, and these spirits have been spotted throughout Japan in different eras, usually at night. It's dangerous to encounter an Umi-Bozu, not just because it sometimes attacks ships,

but also because it causes calm waters to suddenly become stormy and tumultuous. Like many sea monsters, it isn't clear where the Umibozu myth originated. Some people believe it is the ghost of drowned souls. One literary source from the Edo period says that a certain priest by the name of Shugaku-Boh, drowned and became the Umibozu. Other sources conflict with this story. In some stories, swarms of Umi-Bozu climb all over a ship and cause mischief until they're scared away by tobacco smoke. The standard Umi-Bozu story is of a ship traveling on a calm sea at night, only for the Umi-Bozu to suddenly arise from beneath the surface, damaging the hull of the ship.

Then the Umibozu will demand a ladle from the terrified sailors. When the sailors handed over, the umibozu uses the ladle to scoop water into the ship, causing it to sink. However, like many Yokai myths, there is a way to outsmart the umibozu as long as you're prepared. That's why you must always bring a bottomless ladle whenever you go out to sea. If you hand the spirit, a ladle with the bottom punched out, the umibosal will become confused as to why it can't scoop the water. In fact, it will be so confused that you'll have just enough time to escape. China also has a long history of mythological creatures, and that includes an array of sea monsters.

One example is the Shen. It's an unusual beast that takes different forms, and its name is a bit of a giveaway. Shen means large shellfish, and early Chinese dictionaries actually use Shen as a general term for all mollusks, clams, scallops, oysters and more. As you might have guessed, the Shen can appear as a shellfish, but it can also shape-shift. into nearly anything, a sparrow, a bat, a human being, and most importantly, a dragon. The Shen is also known for its relationship to mirages. Chen produce mirages in the same way that ordinary shellfish produce bubbles. They exhale them into the water, and when they break the surface,

sailors may suddenly see mansions or kingdoms. that are impossibly adrift on the high seas. In a way, these two qualities of the Shen, shape-shifting and mirages, make sense together. If a creature can transform itself at will, then why wouldn't it also be able to project a false image onto water or air?

We'll travel from China to Thailand now, where we'll meet the Kunshorn Wari. The story begins in the legendary Himapan forest. This forest appears in an important piece of tri-literature called Tripumicata, also known as the story of the three plains of existence. It was written about 700 years ago by one of the kings of Thailand, and is considered to be the oldest known full-length literary text in the Thai language.

In this work, we learn that the Himapan forest is located in the Himalaya Mountains, which was said to be the center of the universe. Here, in this legendary forest, all kinds of mythical creatures can be found. Many of these creatures appear as combinations of earthly animals. The Pannon Marouac, for example, is a creature with the top half of a monkey

and the bottom half of a deer. The Durong Chrysorn has the body of a horse and the head of a lion. Some of these mythological animals have water-based elements, including the Kunshorn Wari, which helps place them in the category of sea monster. The Kunshorn Wari is half elephant, half fish. It has a trunk and tusks and an elephant's two front legs, But it also has fins, gills, and a fishy tail instead of hind legs.

It lives in the water and can dive to great depths. Perhaps it was first added to Thai mythology after fishermen encountered whales, which can be of similar size and colour to elephants. Another unique sea monster that calls the Himapan Forest home is the Wanei Kampu. Much like other denizens of the Himmapan, the Wane-Campu is a combination of two animals. Its top half is that of a monkey,

and its bottom half is that of an enormous mollusk or clam. In essence, it's a shelled monkey sea monster. Perhaps one of the most unique to be found. Onee-Campu are known as protect. protectors of the forest. They are very smart, and despite living in a shell, very fast. They mainly live in the water, and their diet consists of fresh fruit. Not all sea monsters are individual creatures.

Sometimes they appear as entire civilizations. Look no further than the Ponatory, a society of sea monsters, of sea monsters that are part of Maori mythology. The Ponaturi are often described as resembling goblins. They live beneath the sea in a land called Manawatane. During the night, they come to shore to sleep, and then return to the water once the sun comes up. Ponaturi are terrified of daylight.

It is fatal to them. These goblins appear in several stories from Maori mythology. mythology. One of the stories features the Ponotory capturing two gods. As revenge, another god, Tufferki, tricks the potatory into entering a house. All the holes in the house are blocked up, from the largest window to the tiniest crack. This makes the house pitch black, which is why the Ponoturi believe it is still night outside. Tuftaki then pulls all the boards away from the house and floods it with light, killing all but two of the Ponotory. In the modern era, the sea monster essentially vanishes as a divine being or as a living legendary creature. In this sense,

it's a lot like the dragon or unicorn, which many people stopped looking for and stopped believing in because the evidence simply wasn't there. But this opened up an interesting new era of sea monsters, those that had more modern types of first-hand observational evidence supporting their existence. A good example is the Loch Ness Monster, which initially came to prominence because of a series of sightings, followed by photographs taken in 1933 by a generally upstanding member of the community. These photographs turned out to be faked, but this was only revealed many years later. After the photos, but before additional evidence showed that there was nothing in the lock, there was just enough evidence to build a whole mythology around Loch Ness,

and a giant monster living in Loch Ness could almost be plausible. After all, Loch Ness is is the largest lake by volume in the entire United Kingdom. The water is also famously murky. Anything could be living there. What's interesting is that Loch Ness is actually not that big of a lake when compared to lakes outside the UK. Lake Ontario, for example, is more than 200 times larger, and it's not even close to the largest lake in the Great Lakes region of the US and Canada.

In fact, Canada has dozens of lakes that are larger than Loch Ness. Where are Canada's versions of Nessi? Maybe they just haven't been photographed yet. There is one well-known lake monster that lives in Canada, however. The Naitaka, also known as the Ogopogo. This monster looks somewhat similar to Nessi, a long serpentine creature that move quickly through the water. Indigenous Canadians from the region view Naitaka as a sacred spirit

of the lake that protects the valley. But there are also stories of the Naitaka harming people who don't respect the lake or its guardian. Another sea monster that had evidence supporting its existence is the Cracken. A Cracken is an enormous cephalopod that pulls ships down to the depths. A cephalopod, for those who don't know, is a tentacled creature with a soft body. Think of something like an octopus, squid or cuttlefish. For those of you who've heard of crackens, you might be surprised to find out that they haven't been around for a very long time, at least when compared to other seamanster legends. The first cracken stories began appearing in the 1600s as part of Norwegian sailor superstitions. At this time, the cracken was specifically

believed to appear in the Norwegian Sea off the northwest coast of Norway. The word cracken may be derived from a Norwegian word cracker, meaning an overgrown crooked tree. Large trees with many outgrowths, branches and twigs, kind of looked like giant cephalopods. After establishing itself in Norway, the Crackan myth would then appear in an account written by an Italian monk who travelled through Scandinavia, followed by mentions in the writings of a Danish explorer. Eventually, in the 19th century, a French mollusk researcher began inquiring about the possible existence of giant octopuses. In France, the Cracken myth was written into popular fiction for the first time. In 20,000 leagues under the sea, Jules Verne wrote of a school of giant squid,

attacking the crew of Captain Nemo's famous submarine. And this is the thing about Crackens. It's easy to believe they're real because there are enormous cephalopods swimming beneath the waves. Two examples that humans sometimes encounter are the giant squid and the colossal squid. It wouldn't be shocking to think that some of the crack and myths were based on people finding the actual remains of these animals.

Giant squid can grow to be 16 feet long in the body and 33 feet long if you include the longest tentacles. And the colossal squid can grow to be over 1,000 pounds or nearly 500 kilograms in weight. These real-life squid are also extremely mysterious in their own right. For many decades, the only examples of giant and colossal squid humans encountered were the ones that washed up dead on shore. It was only in 2004 that Japanese researchers acquired for the world. footage of a living giant squid. Similarly, while a few very large colossal squid have been observed, researchers believe they grow even larger than we first thought. To find proof, we can

turn to the stomachs of sperm whales. Sperm whales eat giant and colossal squid. Most of the body is digested, but both types of squid have hard, pointy that whales can't process. Some of these beaks are much larger than expected, and they imply that colossal squid could get as large as 1500 pounds or 700 kilos. Again, these are just the squid we've actually found evidence of. There's another real-life sea monster we should mention

the bloop. Sea monster is a bit of a stretch here, but the A bloop was a very strange thing, and it certainly continues to fuel sea monster legends, even to this day. Back in 1997, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, detected a sound at a remote point of the South Pacific Ocean. This was west of the southern tip of South America. Noah has a system of hydrophones in this region,

which are used to measure underwater seismic activity, ice noises, and the migration of marine mammals. It's important to know that these hydrophones have been there for a long time, and the people manning them are used to detecting certain noises. That's what makes the bloop so interesting. It was an ultra-low-frequency, high-amplitude noise that lasted a whole minute. It was so loud that it was caught on multiple sensors at a range of 3,000 miles or 5,000 kilometers. That's incredibly loud. Five years later, Christopher Fox, an oceanographer working for Noah, did an interview with a reporter where he discussed the bloop.

He suggested a few possibilities, specifically saying that he did not believe it was human-made. because it didn't sound like a submarine or a bomb. In the end, the origin of the sound was mysterious, and Noah would have to do more research before coming to a conclusion. As an offhand comment, Fox mentioned that the audio profile of the bloop looked like the call of a living creature, but that this made little sense because of how powerful the sound was.

The reporter latched onto this detail, and amplified it in his article. Going so far as to say that an animal origin for the bloop was likely, though this is arguably a misrepresentation. This led to many years of people believing that an enormously loud creature was roaming the depths of our oceans. Of course, Noah's further research into the bloop uncovered a much more boring origin.

a cryosysm, also known as an icequake. It turns out that while the bloop's sound profile looked like a call made by an animal, it also looked very similar to many icequakes that had been recorded by Noah in that region. That being said, the icequake that produced the bloop was likely very large indeed. Now, let's look at one final sea monster

that seemed real at first glance, Trunko. Trunko is a nickname given to a strange lump of flesh that washed up on shore in South Africa in 1924. Initially, Trunko was reported on by London's Daily Mail with a headline that read Fish Like a Polar Bear. According to the original sources, an animal was seen battling two killer whales off the coast. It spent three hours fighting before four. finally being exhausted by its efforts and washing up on shore dead. A South African farmer described the animal as looking like a giant polar bear because it appeared to have dense white fur. The name Trunko comes from a long, elephant-like trunk that some observers claim to have seen

on the Trunko corpse. Trunko's body lay on the beach for 10 days, and yet, Yet, no scientists ever came to investigate the strange creature. In fact, up until 2010, it was believed that there were no photos of Trunko at all. The only evidence of its existence came from news reports, like the one mentioned earlier. That's when four photos of Trunco reappe appeared, all taken by A.C. Jones. These photos are actually quite special. Trunko does look like it's covered in dense white fur. It also is quite enormous, much larger than the man that's standing next to it.

So what was Trunco? A British paleontologist named Darren Naish has an answer. Nice has a fascination with sea monsters and cryptozoology in general. He analyzed the Trunco-Photo-photology. a few years after they came to light. He sees Trunco as the rotting carcass of a large marine vertebrate, probably a whale. When whales die, their bodies change rapidly,

due to the exposure to water, bacteria, and scavenging animals like gulls and fish. The white fur on Trunco was likely frayed, badly decayed tissue. The trunk was probably the remainder. mains of the spine, jutting out of the main mass. Nice says that Trunko is a globster. A globster is an unidentified organic mass that washes up out of the sea and winds up on a beach.

People who run into a globster are usually disturbed and confused. The decomposing corpse doesn't look like anything they've ever seen before. This can lead to wild speculation and control. controversy around what a globster might be. Trunco is far from the only globster. Other famous globsters include the Strontzi Beast in 1808, the St. Augustine Monster in 1896, the Tasmanian Globster in 1960, the Bermuda Blob in 1988, and the Montauk Monster in 2008. That's right. The Globster has been confirmed. surrounding humans and creating myths for at least 200 years, if not more.

We've spent a lot of time demystifying the myths and legends that surround sea monsters. It almost feels a little sad, as if we're removing some of the mystery and strangeness of life. So, as a treat, let's end on a few examples of true, real-life sea monsters. These are creatures that didn't turn out to be fake, and actually lived up to the expectations we have when we hear the word monster. The best examples of this kind of sea monster are two different whales, the real-life Moby Dick and Porphyryos. I'll start by saying that the real-life Moby-Dick is not the name of this whale.

The whale has no name. It's known only by reputation. However, its real-life actions in 1820 did end up inspiring the events of Moby-Dig. In 1820, the whaling ship Essex was sailing about a thousand miles off the coast of the Galapagos Islands. It was struggling to catch any whales. The crew had harpooned one earlier, but the whale's tail struck the boat and damaged the hull. The crew cut the harpoon line, and the crew cut the harpoon line, and rushed to repair the boat.

While this was happening, a few crewmen noticed an unusually large male sperm whale. They reported it as being about 85 feet or 26 metres in length. For reference, the average sperm whale is about 52 feet or 16 meters in length. If the crew was right, this would be the largest sperm whale ever recorded. It's possible that they ended. up exaggerating because of what happened next. The whale was acting strangely. It was lying on the surface of the water and facing the ship. It then began to swim towards the hull, picking up speed by diving just a little beneath the water. It rammed Essex, causing it to rock and then dove under

the boat and surfaced near the rudder. The first mate prepared to harpoon it, but the whale was so large that he was sure it could break the rudder if it was provoked. The ship was more than a thousand miles from port. Losing the rudder would be disastrous. The whales swam a few hundred yards away, but instead of leaving, it turned back around and faced the bow of the ship. This time, it charged as fast as it could, keeping its head just above water to act as a ram. It completely crushed the ship's bow, including wood and water flying. Essex rapidly began to take on water, and shortly afterward it sank. The whale swam off unharpooned.

The crew had lifeboats, but the situation was still dire. They'd lost all their supplies and most of their equipment, and still needed to find a way to safety. This was when the captain made a mistake that would end up costing the lives of the life of the lives of most of his crew. Instead of sailing to the Marquesas, or Society Islands, which were relatively nearby, he decided to sail the lifeboat south and try to make for Chile or Peru, both much further away. In the end, only a few men survived the ordeal. The crew even had to resort to cannibalism. The irony is that the reason they chose not to steer towards the

society on Marquesas Islands was that some members of the crew believed they were inhabited by cannibals. This was untrue, and in fact the people living there were known to be friendly to sailors. For our second real-life sea monster, let's travel back to the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century C.E. The Emperor Justinian I, leads the government from its capital city, Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul. Constantinople was one of the most important cities in the history of the world. It has been continuously occupied since 657 BCE, when it was known as Byzantium. It had enormous and complex fortifications and was a major hub for international commerce.

This was thanks to its location between Asia, Europe and the Middle East, and the fact that it was founded on the narrow strip of water that separates the Sea of Marmora from the Black Sea. However, something strange happened in the 6th century. A whale, probably a sperm whale, began to wreak havoc on the boats attempting to enter Constantinople from the Sea of Marmara. It was already unusual that a whale would be in these waters, and there are a lot of theories as to how it happened. However, what we do know is that this whale was really good at sinking ships. It attacked fishing vessels, merchant ships, warships, and whatever else seemed to catch its attention. It didn't make any distinctions.

It began to develop a reputation, and with that reputation came a name. Porphyrios. The name Porfirios means something like the purple one. It could be a reference to the whale's color, or to purple being a royal color. It may also be a reference to a mythological giant named Porfirian. We don't know exactly. Porfirios did not swim in the Sea of Marmora for only a few weeks, or a few months, or even a few years. Some species of whale are very long-lived, and unfortunately for sailors coming to Constantinople,

Porfirius seems to have been one of those types of whales. In fact, Porfirius sank ships in the Sea of Marmora for more than 50 years. The situation was so bad that Justinian himself vowed to catch and kill the whale. However, hunting or killing Porfirius proved to be impossible. It didn't matter that Justinian was at the head of one of the greatest empires on earth. This one angry whale was a problem he couldn't solve. In the end, Porfirius died because it made a fatal mistake. The story goes that the great whale was chasing dolphins one day

and accidentally swam into shallower waters. Porfirius became beached. When locals saw the famous sea monster, they ran out and killed it. Some historians believe this whale might not be able to. not have been the real, Porphyrius, but either way, the ships in the Sea of Marmara stopped being attacked. Since the beginning of human history, the sea has been seen as a place of great power and great mystery. Early sailors spent most of their lives staring out at the dark water and the undulating waves, and these are just some of the many creatures those people

thought they saw lurking just below the surface. Most of them were merely stories, but some of them were real creatures. Who knows what else is down there, just waiting to be discovered.