Creature record / 1902
October 28, 1902. The steamer Fort Salisbury is crossing the equatorial Atlantic in the dark. The look-out reports two masthead lights ahead. The lights sit on a dark mass on a phosphorescent sea, trailing a long luminous wake. Then mass and lights sink. Second Officer A. H. Raymer raises his binoculars as the ship passes forty to fifty yards from the wake. It is not a wake. It is a scaled back, slowly going under. Scales a foot across. Barnacles. A body he judged 500 to 600 feet long. The helmsman and the look-out saw it too. Their master vouched for them. And a ship's log entered the long record of the great sea serpent.
Autumn 1902. The SS Fort Salisbury, a 4,435 ton passenger and cargo steamer of the Bucknall line, worked the route between Britain and South and East Africa. On October 28 she was just south of the Equator, at latitude 5 deg. 31 min. S., longitude 4 deg. 42 min. W. Open Atlantic, south of the Gulf of Guinea proper.