Joe Nickell, PhD, is CSI’s senior research fellow. A former magician and detective, he is author or editor of some forty books.
A“wonderful sea-snake” was repeatedly seen in the area of Gloucester Bay and Nahant Massachusetts, in August 1817 again in 1819. Although attracting “hundreds of curious spectators,” plus a large reward for “his snakeship” alive or dead, the great creature escaped any such fate (Drake 1883, 156–159). The visitations have been reported in many respectable publications— including Richard Ellis’s Monsters of the Sea (1994, 48–55, 362)—and have prompted this assessment: “Whatever this animal may or may not have been, the fact remains that it is one of the most scientifically respected encounters in the annals of cryptozoology, and remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the sea” (Morphy 2010).
Is it possible now, after two centuries, that we might actually solve the enigma? What might such a solution look like— as it begins to come dimly into view? Will it disappoint or fascinate? Or will it simply represent legend, superstition, and eyewitness error, corrected by a detective approach and access to modern research methods?