Richard Whitbourne's Mermaid in St. John's Harbour, Newfoundland

In 1610 the English were only beginning to settle Newfoundland. That year John Guy's Bristol colonists sailed on 5 July and arrived in August to found the first English plantation. Richard Whitbourne, a sea captain and merchant from Devon, was in the Newfoundland trade that season. William Hawkridge was serving under him.

Ten years later Whitbourne published A Discourse and Discovery of New-found-land in London, a book written to encourage English settlement. In its closing pages, just after a passage on Beothuk canoes, he made room for one more story. "Now also I will not omit to relate some thing of a strange Creature that I first saw there in the year 1610."

St. John's Harbour. Early morning. Whitbourne was "standing by the water side" at a landing place. Something came "very swiftly" swimming toward him. It had the face of a woman, "looking cheerfully", with eyes, nose, mouth, chin, ears, neck and forehead. "It seemed to be so beautiful, and in those parts so well proportioned." Its head bore "blue strakes, resembling hair, down to the Neck". He was sure of one thing. "Certainly it was no hair."

It came within the length of a long pike. Whitbourne stepped back. The creature saw him retreat. It dived a little under the water and swam toward the place where he had landed. Now he could see its back. The shoulders and back were "as square, white and smooth as the back of a man". From the middle down, it tapered "like a broad hooked Arrow".

Shortly after, it came to a boat. William Hawkridge was in it, with others. The creature put both hands upon the side of the boat and strove to come in. The men were afraid. One of them struck it a full blow on the head. It fell away.

It did not leave. It went on to two other boats in the harbour, and the men in them, for fear, fled to land. Whitbourne's own verdict was cautious. "This (I suppose) was a Mermaid." Then he stepped back again: "whether it were a Maremaid or no, I know not; I leave it for others to judge."

In 1615 Whitbourne held the first formal court of justice in Newfoundland, at Trinity, and he later governed Sir William Vaughan's colony. Hawkridge sailed with Sir Thomas Button to Hudson Bay and commanded a Northwest Passage voyage of his own. Yet nothing from Hawkridge or the frightened crews survives. Whitbourne's printed account is the only record. No one ever investigated it.

A seal is the most common answer. Robert Hiscock doubts it, because Whitbourne was an experienced sailor and described ears. A seal explanation is also attributed to Rev. Moses Harvey in 1885. An essay in the Asiatic Journal matched the pale skin and blue streaks to a young porpoise. Hiscock objects that a porpoise has no ears and could not have tried to climb into a boat.

Then there is the purpose of the book itself. Hiscock thinks a tall tale aimed at adventurous settlers is plausible. Yet Whitbourne hedged, and composer Dean Burry calls the passage a "fantastically poetic admission from an otherwise stoic military-man and scientific naturalist". No one has shown the story was invented.

In 1628 an engraving in Theodor de Bry's America, credited to Matthäus Merian, showed the strange creature in the harbour. In 2006 a charity public-art project, "Mermaids in the City", brought mermaid statues to St. John's, inspired by the 1610 sighting. On 16 July 2009 Rising Tide Theatre premiered Burry's one-act opera A Creature of Habit in Trinity. The captain's question is still open.