HMS Daedalus (1826)


HMS Daedalus was a 19th-century warship of the Royal Navy. She is primarily remembered for a reported sea serpent sighting by her captain and crew in August 1848.

History

The ship was launched as a fifth-rate frigate of 46 guns of the Modified in 1826, but never commissioned in that role, being roofed over fore and aft and then laid up in Ordinary. After spending 18 years laid up in reserve, she was raséed at Woolwich Dockyard into a corvette, reduced to 19 guns in 1844.
In 1853, Daedalus was laid up at Plymouth Dockyard. Between March and June 1851 she was fitted out as a training ship, and transferred to the Royal Naval Reserve as a drill ship at Bristol. She was finally paid off from this role in September 1910, and sold in 1911 at Bristol to take to pieces.

Sea serpent sighting

On 6 August 1848, Captain M'Quhae of Daedalus and several of his officers and crew saw a sea serpent which was subsequently reported in The Times. The vessel sighted what they named as an enormous serpent between the Cape of Good Hope and St Helena. The crew stated "the creature was twenty minutes in sight of the frigate, and passed under her quarter." The serpent's head "appeared to be about out of the water;" it "was about " in size, and observers estimated "there must have been under water a length of more." The jaws of the serpent "were full of large, jagged teeth" and the "diameter of the exposed part of the body was about."
Captain M'Quhae also reported that the creature was "dark brown, with yellowish-white about the throat" and was moving "at the pace of from." Captain M'Quhae also said "it passed rapidly, but so close under our lee quarter, that had it been a man of my acquaintance I should have easily have recognised his features with the naked eye;" besides, according to the captain, "it had no fins, but something like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of seaweed, washed about its back." M'Quhae stated the head of the creature "was, without any doubt, that of a snake."
In 2015, evolutionary biologist Gary J. Galbreath contended that what the crew of Daedalus saw was a sei whale.