The Sea Serpent of Puget Sound
A skeptical mariner claims to have spotted a 60-foot serpent off the coast of Marrowstone Point, leaving local sailors shaken.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Puget Sound, with its many traditions, has never until yesterday given to the world an authentic story of a sea serpent. The experience of Mate F. A. Woodman, of the steamer Edith, yesterday morning, near Marrowstone Point, with what he believes to have been a sea serpent, will long be discussed by seafaring men. Woodman, a veteran sailor who has plied every ocean, told a reporter that while passing Marrowstone point at 9 o'clock, he saw an object in the water less than 200 feet away. A great, monstrous head, poised on a long, slim neck, came out of the water fully five feet. As the object shook the water from itself, its body shone with reflected light. The head stayed in midair but a moment before disappearing. Woodman estimated the monster to be about sixty feet long and slender throughout. The creature crossed the steamer's bow and appeared again a quarter-mile away, repeating the display. Woodman stated, 'I never saw anything like it before, and don't care to again. Whatever it was I will let other people decide, but I will take my oath that I saw what I have described.'
“A great big, monstrous head, poised on a long, slim neck came out of the water fully five feet, and as the hateful object shook the water from itself it seemed as if its body fairly shone with reflected light.”
While this report captures the 'sea monster' craze of the late 19th century, it also reflects the genuine isolation and wildness of the Sound before modern maritime traffic. Today, Marrowstone Point is a quiet state park, but the allure of the 'unknown' in local waters remains a staple of Pacific Northwest folklore.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.