Fishermen Have Battle With Sea Serpent

Long Beach, California — Five men who went fishing yesterday* on the launch Rita assert they had an encounter with a sea serpent at the Grouper banks, eighteen miles off shore. Guy Griffith and James Harvey were of the party.

"The monster was about forty feet long," said Griffith, "and about fifteen feet back from the head it had a big dorsal fin. The head was as big as a barrel and brown with eyes as big as my fist and it moved from side to side. The tail was like that of a porpoise. We first sighted the thing 100 feet away.

"The head was then out of the water and I started to shoot at it, but feared it might become angry and wreck us, so I told one of the boys to start the engine and we glided away but the monster came after us. We gave the engine all she could stand and got away from the creature."

[*Yesterday, in this case, was February 19, 1909, as the story was filed on February 20, 1909.]

Source: Fort Wayne, Indiana Fort Wayne Journal Gazette February 21, 1909 Archival research: Jerome Clark

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