An "enormous" creature with a hard shell on its back and a human-like head is said to have once washed up on a beach in the West Country. The unknown beast, described as 48ft long and having green eyes, was reported to have stranded on Porthleven beach during a violent storm.
Two boys were playing on the coast and looking for shipwrecks when they stumbled across it. The hair-raising event happened on September 14, 1786, and was shared upcountry in the old weekly newspaper, Hereford Journal, in October of the same year. It was reported by a man from Cornwall who related how villagers slew the unknown beast, reports Cornwall Live.
Called 'Sea Monster', the article reads: "A just and particular description of a very curious and most surprising sea monster driven on shore in Portleaven Bay (sic), on the coast of Cornwall, on the 14th of Sept. 1786, by the strong westerly winds and tempestuous weather, which continued to a violent degree for several days successively, and did much damage at that place and neighbourhood.
Read more: Raw sewage pours into the sea at two West Country beaches
"This monster was first discovered by two boys who (agreeable to the custom of that place) went in search of wreck soon after day break; and as they stood on the cliff which commanded a prospect of a small sandy cove, they, at a distance of about a mile, discovered something of enormous hulk near the shore, and which after a short time they apprehended to be the side or part of an unfortunate ship which had the preceding night been broken to pieces by the extremities of the shore.
"They immediately went towards the place with sanguine expectation of great success, and as they approached the spot (the breaking waves at times leaving it dry) they were both struck with the utmost consternation to perceive such motions as it was something which had life."
Terrified, the boys ran towards a group of men they knew and told them what they had witnessed. The men did not believe them at first, but eventually decided to follow them and see the monster for themselves.
"A great number of people soon collected themselves into a body, and determined to go armed, some with large sticks and pokers, others with hatchets, spits, etc, which was, after some deliberation, carried into execution," the article reports. "On their coming near the spot they perceived it to be something living, as was represented, and it raised its head, which had not before been perceived, and appeared to direct its course towards them. All were alarmed – some stood their ground, others possessed of greater fear turned back, they could see no legs to it, but it appeared to crawl on its belly, raising its body at times a little from the sand."
No one knew what the animal was. "Various were the opinions about this creature; some said it was a mermaid, others a whale – but the greater number disbelieving the existence of the former, and adhering to the improbability of the latter, they were all equally at a loss," the story reports.
"When it was agreed to examine what it was, they all went towards it, and after an hour’s beating, stabbing it, etc, it expired with a groan. Its length was found to be from the top of its head to the end of its tail, 48 feet to inches, and its circumference in the largest part of the body 24 feet and a half. Its head was large, and prickly in the hinder part, and not formed much unlike that of a man; its eyes were greenish; its mouth large; its nose flat, and from its neck to the navel, resembling nearest to the human kind; its back was hard and more difficult to penetrate than the shell of a turtle; it had two short fore feet, formed like the paw of a monkey, and its hinder parts shaped measured full seven feet in width at the extent, and but five feet long."
It is not known what was done with the body of the creature, or if anyone studied it. "It is supposed a large quantity of oil will be produced from it, which, with the shell of its back, and its fins, are judged, if properly managed, to be of great value, and will be of considerable benefit to this neighbourhood," the Cornish man who sent the article added. "No one that has seen it knows its name, nor has any monster like it ever been described in record, or come within the knowledge of this kingdom."
Dozens of people over the years have claimed to have seen a 20ft long snake-like creature, dark skinned with humps on its back and a long neck, slithering its way through the sea. The strange sightings in the waters off the coast of Cornwall have made people question whether plesiosaurs, giant marine reptiles which lived at the same time as dinosaurs and thought to have died out 65 million years ago, could still be alive.
Sightings can be traced back about 140 years, when a long-necked beast was allegedly caught by fishermen in Gerrans Bay. And there are so many that the sightings have been turned into a legend, with the mysterious creature being named Morgawr, Cornish for sea giant.
There is no scientific explanation as to what people have actually seen - but people have suggested there might be more than one strange creature stalking the Cornish waters. The first recorded time someone raised the hypothesis that it could be a surviving prehistoric animal was in July 1949.
Harold T. Wilkins and a friend said they were in a tidal creek in Cornwall when they saw “two remarkable saurians, 15-20ft long, just like a pair of Mesozoic plesiosaur”.
In 2002, a former Natural History Museum worker claimed he captured the reptile on camera. John Holmes released strange footage which he had filmed three years prior in Gerrans Bay, off the Roseland Peninsula.
Mr Holmes, who lived in Sticker near St Austell, said at the time: "My pet theory is that it was a living fossil. I think that there is a group of plesiosaurs going around in the oceans of the world. All around Britain there have been sightings of sea serpents."
To this day, there are many people around the world who, like Mr Holmes, think plesiosaurs defied death and still exist. The most famous "present-day plesiosaur" example is the legendary Loch Ness monster. But when researchers from New Zealand extracted DNA from water samples from the loch in 2019, in an attempt to catalogue its living specie, they didn't find any proof of large animals or a plesiosaur. You can read all about the plesiosaur theory here.
