In the summer of 1817, a mysterious creature was seen swimming in the harbor of Gloucester and along the coast of Cape Ann. Eyewitnesses described it as a gigantic, serpent-like animal, its long body marked by a series of humps rising and falling above the water. Throughout that summer and into the following year, numerous fishermen and other credible locals reported sightings of the creature, capturing the imagination of scientists, newspapers, and the public alike. The Gloucester Sea Serpent quickly became a legend and remains one of the most well-documented cryptid sightings ever recorded.
A contemporary illustration of the Gloucester Sea Serpent.
Although Indigenous traditions in the region had long spoken of mysterious sea creatures, the earliest recorded European account dates to 1638, when explorer John Josselyn described a strange marine animal off the New England coast.
It was not until August 1817, however, that the legend truly took shape. That summer, hundreds of witnesses reported seeing a massive creature in Gloucester Harbor. It was estimated to be between 50 and 100 feet long, with a head resembling that of a turtle or perhaps a horse, held above the water. Its body was described as segmented, like a “string of buoys” or kegs, and it moved with a distinctive undulating motion, rising and falling in a series of vertical waves.
The creature was reported to swim incredibly fast. “He moved very rapidly through the water, I should say a mile in two, or at most, in three minutes,” reported one witness.
“When he moved on the surface of the water, his motion was slow, at times playing about in circles, and sometimes moving nearly straight forward. When he disappeared, he sunk apparently directly down, and would next appear at two hundred yards from where he disappeared, in two minutes,” reported Solomon Allen III, another witness.
The sightings sparked intense debate within the community. Even the Linnaean Society of New England took notice. Within a week of the first reports, the society appointed a special committee to “collect evidence with regard to the existence and appearance of any such animal.” The committee interviewed numerous witnesses and prepared a report for publication and distribution to scientific societies around the world.
In this report, the committee concluded not only that the creature was real, but that it represented a previously unknown species, which they named Scoliophis atlanticus. This identification was based in part on a curious discovery: a three-foot-long snake found on a nearby beach by a local resident. The specimen possessed an unusually undulating spine, and, given its proximity to the harbor sightings, the society proposed that it was the “progeny of the great serpent.”
The Linnaean Society illustration of the Gloucester Sea Serpent.
John Davis, the society’s president, later acknowledged the boldness of this claim, admitting that “it was rather bold to come out with a new genus, in the present advanced state of Natural History, but we thought the characteristics of the creature required it.”
However, the society’s pamphlet was met with widespread ridicule and even inspired the fabrication of numerous false accounts. The story was especially mocked in the American South, where Charleston playwright William Crafts produced a satirical work titled The Sea Serpent; or, Gloucester Hoax: a Dramatic jeu d’esprit in Three Acts. The play advanced the idea that the serpent was nothing more than a hoax, devised to enhance the reputation of Gloucester.
The Gloucester sea serpent was definitively debunked by the Boston Society of Natural History in 1863. The Society reexamined the supposed “progeny” preserved in the Linnaean Society’s collection and found it to be an ordinary black snake with a deformed spine. As for the sightings themselves, they were attributed to misidentification. The most plausibly being a humpbacked whale feeding at the surface, its rolling back creating the illusion of a many-humped serpent. With this, Scoliophis atlanticus was declared a myth.
References:
# “It appeared so strange and wonderful…”. Massachusetts Historical Society
# The Gloucester Sea Serpent. Museum of Hoaxes
# The monstrous serpent was real!. Salon
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