The Steamer Otetiani and the Seneca Lake Sea Serpent

Seneca Lake is long, narrow and deep. Its deepest point lies 618 feet down. Side-wheel steamers of the Seneca Lake Steam Navigation Company carried passengers along its length, and one of them was the Otetiani.

The date itself is a small mystery. Many retellings give July 14, 1899. The newspaper reports with page numbers, in the Buffalo Review and the Elmira Star-Gazette, point to Saturday, July 14, 1900.

The Otetiani was heading north from Watkins Glen toward Geneva. Somewhere between Dresden on the west shore and Willard on the east, pilot Frederick Rose saw something in the water about 400 yards ahead. It looked like an overturned boat. Captain Carleton C. Herendeen studied it through his telescope. It was "about 25 feet long with a very sharp bow and long-narrow stern." He slowed down. At about 100 yards, the object turned and began slowly moving away.

Herendeen ordered full speed and came alongside. The thing "turned toward the boat, raising its head, looked in the direction of the boat and opened its mouth, displaying two rows of sharp, white teeth."

The captain meant to take it. Alive if he could. The creature sank out of sight and the steamer passed over the spot. When it rose again, the starboard paddle wheel was aimed at its middle, halfway between head and tail. The blow was felt aboard. Passengers were thrown off balance. "It raised its head, gave what sounded like a gasp, and lay quiet. Its spinal column had been broken and it was dead."

Lifeboats went down. The crew passed ropes around both ends to haul it to Geneva. As the carcass cleared the water, one rope slipped. The weight was too much, and they let go of the other. The body sank into water more than 600 feet deep.

Among the passengers was Prof. George R. Elwood, a geologist of Guelph, Ontario. His description reached a Rochester Herald correspondent. A head perhaps four feet long, triangular. Round, fish-like eyes that never blinked. A horny hide like terrapin shell, brown with a greenish tinge, over a cream-white belly. A tail that tapered, then broadened "much like a whale." His verdict was an animal "most resembling a Clidastes," an extinct marine lizard of the mosasaur family. Other named passengers included Albert L. Fowle, D. W. Hallenbeck, George C. Schell, Fred S. Bronson and Charles E. Coon. No independent record of Elwood himself has been confirmed.

The local press was not convinced. The Geneva Gazette complained that the serpent should have been brought to Geneva "alive and squirming," and a later report suggested the whole thing was a hoax. A Geneva daily wondered whether the story "owed something to heat or drink." The Star-Gazette ran it under the headline "That Sea Serpent: The Story Again Sprung by a Vivid Correspondent." Sceptics have since offered a large eel, sturgeon or floating logs. Writer Charley Githler judged a staged hoax by passengers and crew "exceedingly unlikely."

The Geneva Historical Society counts at least 20 reported sightings on the lake, the most recent in 2013. Seneca County Historian Walter Gable retold the Otetiani story in 2009, and the 2015 documentary Exploring Seneca takes it as its starting point. That same year, Geneva's city council voted 6 to 1 to make it illegal to hunt, trap or harm "the Seneca Lake Monster or any of its descendants." The creature is known as Old Greeny.