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Post by Dave Homewood on Mar 4, 2023 0:39:16 GMT 12
"SEA SERPENT"
MODEST DIMENSIONS
HAIRY HEAD AND TINY EARS
TAIL CURLED OVER BACK
CREATURE SEEN IN CABLE BAY
[by TELEGRAPH — OWN correspondent] NELSON. Friday
Once again a "sea serpent" is reported to have been seen by a launch party off Pepin Island, Cable Bay, but on this occasion it was no fearsome monster, but comparatively small, little more than 8ft. long and about the same size round as a large conger eel. The creature was seen by Mrs. E. H. Kawharu, of Durville Island, and other members of a launch party which was proceeding past Pepin Island recently.
Mrs. Kawharu to-day said that when first seen the creature was some distance from the launch and about a chain and a-half from the shore, basking in the sunshine, and was thought to be a piece of driftwood. As the launch drew near a small head with very tiny ears could be seen perched on a long neck about 2ft. out of the water. The head appeared to be covered with a growth of hair. Curled over its back was a tail about 4ft. long, fishtail shaped at the tip. The launch got within 15 yards of it when the creature dived and disappeared. Mrs. Kawharu said that it was not fearsome in appearance, but she had never seen anything at all like it before.
Early last month Mr. H. C. Christian, of Te Rawa, Pelorus Sound, reported that while passing Pepin Island in a launch with his sister-in-law and a young native workman, they saw what appeared to be the branch of a tree sticking out of the water. It had a somewhat swanlike shape, and appeared to be 8ft. or 9ft. long. As they got closer to the object "they found that it was alive, and it turned its head toward the launch.
"We noticed that its tail, which protruded about 3ft., curved back toward the centre of the fish, and was split or comb-shaped at the edges," said Mr. Christian. "The head was somewhat like that of an eel, but rather of the appearance of a dog's head, with hair on top. and was 3ft. out of the water.
"A most peculiar feature was that when we saw it first it appeared to be quite still, although fully two-thirds of the fish was out of the water, and it remained in that position until I turned my launch toward it,' and we got within 40ft. of it. when it submerged. I have been 35 years in this territory, and have seen nothing like it before."
NEW ZEALAND HERALD, 15 JULY 1939
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Post by davidd on Mar 4, 2023 11:00:33 GMT 12
Do we hear much of "strange sea creatures" today? People still like to report strange creatures cast up on beaches and the like (Frost fish, Leopard seals, Sun fish), but because these ones are fully visible, or cannot escape (dead), they can in many instances (if they are not too deteriorated) be identified without too much difficulty. However, ones seen at sea usually have a good proportion of their bodies concealed below the waves (as in the above example), which always present difficulties. Which is why I find it difficult to understand how, as in example immediately above (Mr Christian of Te Rawa), could tell that "fully two thirds of the fish was out of the water" unless the water was so clear that he could indeed see the whole fish and its proportions. Most of us would know that looking at something partially under water from a distance and at a flat angle is not in a good position to arrive at any sort of accurate dimensions, etc. However, such things as deteriorated dead bodies (human or otherwise) have fooled people who come across them in/beside rivers or the sea - even identifying whale species found under such circumstances can often take much technical research.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Mar 4, 2023 15:56:45 GMT 12
Yes, I think there is a lot of jumping to conclusions by witnesses of mysterious sea creatures. Sometimes there are some really good clear sightings by multiple people though that cannot be explained away. Science fully admits we still have not discovered most of the things that live under the sea, so there is always a possibility that these things are real.
But these days the most reports I have seen of weird stuff seen in or under the sea are USO's, like the US Navy has reported seeing.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 8, 2024 8:28:37 GMT 12
THE PRESS, 21 MAY 1960
UNSOLVED MYSTERIES OF THE SEA
Marlborough Lost After Leaving Lyttelton
[Specially written for ‘The Press" by DAVID GUNSTON]
By its very nature, the sea has always given rise to more mysteries than the land, mysteries of a kind that defy explanation even in this rational age. Everyone knows the classic strange tales of the Mary Celeste, the Flying Dutchman, and the like, but many lesser-known incidents of the sea rival them in oddity and fascination.
Take, for instance, the case of a big three-master, the Marlborough. She left Lyttelton in January, 1890, with a good solid crew, a first-rate skipper, a cargo of sheep and several passengers, one a woman. She did not reach her home port of Glasgow, and was in fact last seen off the tip of South America. A special inquiry set up in 1891 failed to establish the cause of her sudden disappearance, and she was written off with all hands.
Yet the inquiry’s verdict was wrong, for the Marlborough was found. She turned up again, more than 23 years later. In October, 1913, she was sighted by another sailing ship off Tierra del Fuego, and when she did not return a signal and appeared to be in distress, with canvas damaged and missing, the captain of the other ship became worried and put off in a boat with some of his men to investigate. The derelict lay practically upright in a sheltered position; but her sails, superstructure, hull —all were green with mildew. Rigging was rotted, the boats almost disintegrated, the decking soft to the tread. Yet her name at the stern was still clearly legible.
Skeletons, clad in mouldy rags, were everywhere — on the deck, in the hold, the wardroom, the cabins. One lay close by the crumbling wheel. All evidently had met their deaths suddenly and unexpectedly — but how? Even more puzzling was how the vessel had survived those merciless seas of the "Roaring Forties,” out of control yet still seaworthy, for nearly 24 years? The secret was never discovered. The Marlborough’s log had rotted beyond recognition and her papers were missing, probably blown away by the wind. Her grim, mildewy fate remains a profound mystery.
Off the west coast of America early in 1907 there had been reported a drifting derelict, believed to be the United States schooner Everest Webster. Several vessels had reported seeing her, and a coastguard cutter actually set out to send the hulk to the bottom, but was totally unable to find her. Her existence as a derelict had been known for about a month when the four-master Quevilly came suddenly upon the wreck and decided to investigate, solely out of curiosity, as her skipper could neither take her in tow nor sink her.
After much difficulty, the Quevilly’s boarding party forced open the waterlogged door of the aftercabin, hoping perhaps to find the log and with it some clue as to why she had been abandoned. To their horror they were confronted by a group of men near death: gaunt, ashen-faced shadows of men with tangled beards and fixed, unseeing eyes. They all stirred feebly on their bunks, tried to get up and speak, but without avail. Nearly dead from starvation, cold and damp, they could not speak intelligibly, nor could they afterwards offer a single word of explanation why the Everest Webster came to be wrecked, why they made no bid for aid or escape, or why they stuck to their floating tomb for a whole month, just lying on their bunks waiting for the end.
Inexplicable Even more inexplicable was the fate of the little collier Eltham, off the South Cornish coast in 1929. Well known in those waters and with a capable master and a few of proven worth, she nevertheless left South Wales with a cargo of coal and a few days later was found, not too seriously damaged, stranded on some treacherous rocks two cables from the shore. Her wheel and steering-gear were in good order, her spars sound, her boats intact, her anchors stowed normally. Yet her skipper and crew had vanished, and with them her papers. The weather at the time was calm and the winds light: there was in fact no earthly reason for the mishap. No distress signals or cries for help were noticed on the night of her wrecking by the coastguard station close by. No bodies were ever washed ashore, no survivors.
Another baffling mystery developed many years ago, actually within the harbour of Queenstown, Ireland, when the duty pilot was surprised one November evening to see a bedraggled-looking three-master slowly approaching the port entrance through the thick fog. He set out to board her, received no welcoming shout, found no ladder lowered over the side for him, and after eventually getting aboard was stupefied to find he was alone on an empty ship. Everything was in order, including a cargo of mahogany blocks of considerable value. The ship’s papers had vanished, and her crew also, but there was no evidence of mutiny, sickness or anything untoward. Strangest of all. the vessel bore no name anywhere. She was towed into the harbour and subsequently examined with a tooth-comb. No clues to the mystery were discovered, and no owners or consignee ever came forward to claim her. She was never identified, nor her mystery solved, and after some years was sold by auction and broken up.
Cases of unexplained desertion of an apparently perfectly sound ship at sea always call to mind the unsolved case of the Mary Celeste. But at least a halfdozen other instances of almost identical happenings are on record. One was that of the cargo steamer Zebrina, a French vessel well-known in the English Channel. In 1917 she was found recently abandoned off Cherbourg: the table was laid in the mess-room, washing was drying on a deck-line, the log had been correctly written up to the day before.
Admittedly this was a war-time case, when reasons for abandoning ship are easier to find. But after the war no trace was found in German camps of the Zebrine’s crew, who at the time were presumed to have been taken prisoner by a U-boat which, oddly enough, never sank her. U-boat records also failed to offer any clues to the mystery, and the fate of the Zebrine’s men and their reasons for leaving her so suddenly have never been solved.
A Weird Case Odder still was the weird case of the P.E.C.C., a ship known by its index initials. On February 22, 1939, several months before the outbreak of World War II, a number of ships in the Atlantic picked up distress signals from a vessel claiming to be the P.E.C.C. She said she had been torpedoed some 350 miles south of the Azores. The United States liner Tulsa, the British liner Empress of Australia, the Greek merchantman Mont Pelion and a number of other ships all heard the S.O.S. messages, and those nearest left their course to give aid. However, no ship or wreckage was ever discovered—no lifeboats, floating oil or any trace whatever of a sunken ship. France, Britain, the United States and Germany all denied the presence of any of their submarines in the area concerned, and then Lloyds of London dropped a bombshell by saying that the initials P.E.C.C. referred to the Dutch liner Flandria, which had been reported lost with all hands some years before.
No owners or insurance companies ever reported the disappearance of any vessel in that area, yet at least 10 radio operators on 10 different ships heard the S.O.S.’s independently, so someone must have sent them out, and it was proved that the signals emanated from a position at sea, and so could not have been sent out by a hoaxer on land. Yet for a ship’s operator to hoax an S.O.S. in such circumstances seems unthinkable. The P.E.C.C. clearly belongs to the world’s fleet of mysteries.
Ship Vanished Lastly, let us consider the puzzle of the Baychimo, a fine, solid steel steamer of 1300 tons owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company and used by the company to collect furs along the Victoria Land coast of the North-West Territory of Canada. She left Vancouver on a normal trip in July, 1931, but by October was fast in the pack-ice. Her captain wisely decided to leave her for the winter for the greater safety of the company’s permanent huts built ashore, half a mile away. At the end of November a terrific blizzard confined the crew to their huts for two days, and when they emerged the Baychimo had completely vanished. They searched for their ship for miles around on the pack-ice, but failing to find her, came to the conclusion that she had broken up in the gale and sunk.
When they were rescued by Eskimos and reached Vancouver they were welcomed with amazement, for the company was in possession of reports that the ship had been sighted several hundred miles away to the east. Eventually, in April, 1932, a young explorer named Melvin found and boarded her, confirming that her vast cargo of furs was still in the hold. Unfortunately, as he was now more than 3000 miles from his base in Alaska, he had insufficient equipment for salvage. As the months went on, other explorers, traders, Eskimos and a small schooner all sighted the Baychimo and endeavoured to take her and her precious furs. All failed, and finally she disappeared into the limbo of lost ships, inaccessible either to the greed or the curiosity of man.
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Post by davidd on Apr 8, 2024 10:08:33 GMT 12
Certainly some weird stuff there Dave H, which I am in no position to challenge in any way. Insurance was sometimes a suspected reason for some ship losses, but most of the above examples do not seem to fit into any scenario that would make sense. Losses of modern airliners are another can of worms.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 8, 2024 15:54:45 GMT 12
The ship that was lost for 23 years and then found was odd!
And the one with all the crew in their bunks too.
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Post by nuuumannn on Apr 14, 2024 16:21:33 GMT 12
Here's a wee mystery that I came across a year or so ago while visiting a friend who lives in Golden Bay. This is a sea mine casing, but where it came from is a mystery. When I spotted it in my friend's garden, she said it was there when she bought the house and was quite shocked when I told her it was a sea mine casing. When doing some enquiries, I had heard that the German raider SMS Wolf had deposited mines off the coast of Farewell Spit during the Great War and late last Century one of these drifted ashore on a beach in Golden Bay. Armed with this I looked at German mines from that period to see if they matched the design of the one in my friend's garden. They didn't, and it was through looking at alternative designs that I realised it was not a relic from the Great War, but a British example of a Mk.XVII Contact Mine, but how did it end up housing a tree in a secluded Golden Bay property? It makes a curious addition to my friend's garden at least... Sea mine
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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 14, 2024 17:42:09 GMT 12
Is it moulded concrete? Or is it metal?
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Post by davidd on Apr 23, 2024 9:22:08 GMT 12
The majority of mines laid in NZ waters in WW2 were British ones, serving in the three "controlled fields", in Akaroa (Banks Peninsula), Mahanga Bay (Wellington), and Islington Bay (between Rangitoto and Motutapu Islands, Auckland). Australian-manufactured mines were also shipped to NZ and installed at various sites around the country. Read official history of NZ in WW2, "The Royal New Zealand Navy", pgs 223 - 237 (Chapter 15, Anti-Invasion Mine Defences). Of course Germany also left some steel "presents" in 1940 (and 1941?), which claimed the NIAGARA shortly thereafter. Possibly Germany also left other mines in NZ waters in WW1?
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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 23, 2024 18:57:24 GMT 12
Yes, Niagara sank in 1940. And some theorists thought it may also have been a rogue Allied mine that got the Niagara.
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Post by oj on Apr 23, 2024 19:41:16 GMT 12
We had a completely spherical mine shell at the walkway entrance to the Opononi wharf in the 1950's and well beyond then. First two photos are of late 1940’s when the mine was washed up onto the beach about half way between Omapere and Opononi. The small boy on the left is my elder brother Barry. Naturally this was after the UBX Squad had de-fused it and removed all the explosive material. The later photo of 1956 shows where the mine was put on public display for decades, at the Opononi Wharf walkway entrance. I have no knowledge of the country of origin or manufacture. There was also one on the western side of SH3 in about the centre of Mokau township through to at least 2015 and may still be there.
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Post by FlyingKiwi on Apr 23, 2024 20:44:41 GMT 12
According to the NZ Navy museum website the HKS Orion laid 228 mines in the Hauraki Gulf on 13/14 June 1940, two of which later sunk the RMS Niagara and HMS Puriri, and more than half of the others were later recovered but that leaves quite a few remainders I suppose. Interestingly there were also a couple of cases of First World War German mines washing up in 1918/19.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 23, 2024 21:58:44 GMT 12
There was also one on the western side of SH3 in about the centre of Mokau township through to at least 2015 and may still be there. The Mokau one can be seen on Google Streetview on the island at the intersection of North Street and Rerenga Street. This one was called a German mine for decades till someone pointed out it was actually British. LINK
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Post by oj on Apr 24, 2024 11:50:07 GMT 12
And the Opononi mine is now outside the Omapere Museum: www.google.com/maps/@-35.5274896,173.3910046,3a,20y,157.8h,84.11t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sGwWecxb6Mkq8rJQDsgZU-g!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DGwWecxb6Mkq8rJQDsgZU-g%26cb_client%3Dsearch.gws-prod.gps%26w%3D211%26h%3D120%26yaw%3D137.94693%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?authuser=0&entry=ttu
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Post by Antonio on Apr 24, 2024 12:09:32 GMT 12
And the Opononi mine is now outside the Omapere Museum: Ahhhh, thanks for that. Did a street view of Opononi but couldn't find it. Here ya
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