A great serpent of the sea, reported by sailors and naturalists for centuries. Erik Pontoppidan described sea serpents in the eighteenth century. In 1808, vertebrae from a carcass on Stronsay in Orkney reached Edinburgh, and Patrick Neill named it Halsydrus pontoppidani. 1917. South-east of Iceland, the crew of HMS Hilary turned their guns on one, a case Nature later called important evidence. In 1966 John Ridgway, rowing English Rose III across the North Atlantic, believed he had seen one in the night. Bernard Heuvelmans later classified the reported types.
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