The Strange 'Sea Monster' of Clay Street
A fisherman’s routine day at the docks ends with the haul of a mysterious, gelatinous creature.
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.
A few days ago, Bert K. Knapp, while fishing off Clay street, caught a curious specimen of marine animal life. He had his line deep in the water and concluded to quit and go home, when the line appeared to be caught on a pile. After much tugging the line was loosed, but snagged several times more before he finally pulled the sea monster to the shore. It resembled a large worm about fifteen inches long and four inches in diameter, but consisted of a kind of jelly inside a tough skin. Underneath were rows of protuberances resembling the legs of a caterpillar. The animal was apparently without a head, the place where the head ought to have been appearing as though the head had been cut off and a lot of little mouths put in its place. After being kept for a day or two in water the animal became much reduced in size.
“It resembled a large worm about fifteen inches long and four inches in diameter, but consisted of a kind of jelly inside a tough skin.”
While this was likely an encounter with a sea cucumber or a similar marine invertebrate, the fascination with what lurks beneath the surface of the Puget Sound remains a persistent fixture of local lore. Today, Clay Street ends abruptly at the Elliott Bay Trail, where the bustling waterfront has long since paved over the old piers where Knapp made his discovery.
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