Creature record / 1848
New Year's Eve, 1848. A newly commissioned Royal Navy ship, HMS Plumper, was in the open Atlantic, nearly due west of Oporto. It was morning. An officer on board saw something in the water. A long black creature with a sharp head. It moved slowly, about two knots. Along its back, something like a mane kept washing about in the sea. Then the ship sailed on, and the creature fell too far astern to examine. Months later the officer's letter and sketch appeared in the Illustrated London News. The writer never gave a name. It is still the only record of what was seen that morning.
In the autumn of 1848, Britain had sea serpents on its mind. On 28 October the Illustrated London News covered the creature seen from HMS Daedalus that August, between the Cape of Good Hope and St Helena. A craze followed, and the satirists of Punch joined in.