Member-only story
Justice for the Kraken!
A gentle giant of legend
This has been in draft for a long time. Inspired by Draft Day 2025, I finished it off. Sometimes you just need a gentle nudge.
On 26 September 1808, John Peace took his boat out to fish in the sea around Stronsay in the Orkney Islands. About half a mile off Rothiesholm Head, Peace saw a flock of seabirds flying about a large mass floating in the water. Rowing towards it, he expected to find a dead whale but what he encountered was the carcass of something had never seen before — a giant long-necked creature with flippers and a mane of coarse hair.
Two weeks later, another storm pushed the remains onto the shore. Peace and other locals came to look at what was left of the sea serpent. It also attracted the attention of the learned men of the Wernerian Natural History Society in Edinburgh. In January of the following year, John Barclay and Patrick Neill gave presentations to the society. Barclay described the creature’s vertebrae, while Neill gave it the scientific name Halsydrus pontoppidani, in honour of Erik Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen.
Bishop Pontopiddan was something of an expert on sea monsters.
Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth…
