The Ocean’s Myths and Legends

At present, the world is a little hard to comprehend so why not escape reality for a few moments and delve into the enchanting tales and captivating legends of our deep blue sea. The ocean has been a mysterious place for centuries and even today it is said that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the depths of our very own blue planet. For many in previous centuries, the ocean posed even more mysteries than it does today while the colourful tales of sweet sirens, vicious whirlpools and sailor-snacking krakens filled the heads of our predecessors. Yet where did these tales come from and is there any truth behind the them?

While mermaids are accepted as fantasy today, many still love the idea of these charming ocean dwellers. Mermaids were first mentioned all the way back in the 4th century BC when they were depicted as grand Babylonian gods who came on land for a normal life during the day but slipped back under the waves at night. By the time the Greeks strode upon the Earth, the idea of mermaids had blurred into stories of beautiful sirens whose sweet singing lured sailors into the treacherous waters and to their deaths. Surprisingly, sirens were originally depicted as half-woman, half-bird creatures but either way, sailors were tied to the ship’s masts while their ears were filled with wax to stop them plunging into the deep. In 1492, the famous explorer Christopher Columbus even recorded the sighting of a fair mermaid on his voyage during which he later discovered the Americas. However, despite multiple tales, illustrations and poems depicting mermaids, it is thought that these sightings were instead mere hallucinations by sailors who had spent too long bobbing about at sea staring at endless blue horizons and who had consumed too much unappetising food and cheap rum. Researchers now think that Columbus’s mermaid sighting in 1492 was actually the first written record of manatees. That’s right, our old drunken sailors had been mistaking manatees and dugongs, also known as sea cows, for beautiful women. I’m sure a ‘sea cow’ is not quite the stunning figure we all had in mind! Interestingly though, manatees and dugongs make up a group of animals called ‘Sirenian’ whose name is derived from the mythical women found within Greek mythology.

Intrepid sailors did not just have mermaids and sirens to worry about either, they also had enormous deadly deep-sea creatures to contend with. The kraken was thought to prowl the seas around Norway, Greenland and Iceland, waiting for the easy prey of a wooden ship to sail past. Their giant sucker-filled tentacles would suddenly burst out of the waves, wrap themselves around an unsuspecting vessel and try to sink both the ship and its crew. Failing to do so, the kraken would then swim in angry circles around the boat, creating an enormous whirlpool which could slowly drag the sailors down into the sea which the kraken filled with a muddy, dark substance. It is no surprise that this was considered sailors’ most feared creature, yet the myth also said that abundant schools of fish flowed off the back of this giant monster, leaving the bravest of men setting out to take on the beast. Thankfully, the kraken has remained in folklore but its real-life counterpart still rules the waves. For years, scientists believed giant squid existed but our only evidence was their enormous carcasses washing up on shorelines and the painful sucker scars which are sometimes seen scattered across a sperm whale’s skin. In 2005, Japanese researchers finally caught the first video of the giant squid, a creature reaching up to 40 foot in length with eight arms, two long feeding tentacles, a beak and sprays of jet black ink. Luckily, these monsters reside in extremely deep waters, feeding only on jellyfish and shrimp and not the lives of modern day ocean-goers.

While you may find it hard to believe, the tale of unicorns also came partially from the sea. While the tale of unicorns was already spread around the world, it wasn’t until the sea provided the ‘evidence’ that people really started to believe in them. Narwhals are whales which live in the Arctic and one of their teeth protrudes through their skin to create a 10 foot long tusk which gave them the title ‘unicorn of the sea’. These creatures were hunted by Vikings and Norsemen who gave them the name narwhal which means ‘corpse whale’ in Norse. They were given this name due to their blotched grey skin which was thought to be a similar shade to the colour of a drowned man. Once killed, the tusks were taken from the whales and sold to traders who then ingeniously weaved stories of unicorn horns as a way to sell their product for extortionate profit. Narwhal tusks were sold to royalty who used them for thrones and cutlery and accounting for inflation, today each tusk would be worth £2,000,000! It was believed that once these ‘unicorn horns’ were crushed, they provided an extremely powerful, almost magical medicine which reversed the effects of poison. In fact, in 1584, Ivan the Terrible demanded his unicorn horn be brought to him on his deathbed to save him. Sadly, or maybe not, his horn failed to save his life. In the 1600s, a Danish scholar finally managed to prove that the horns were actually the product of Narwhals, yet today these arctic creatures remain extremely elusive and hard to study, leaving their lives still shrouded in mystery.

It is not only the sea’s creatures which have created myths either, with the waves themselves providing powerful stories in almost every culture. While Atlantis is a famous lost civilisation, the Soloman Islands have their own story rooted in their heritage. It is thought that an unhappy wife left her husband to go live with a new man on the island of Teonimanu. The disgruntled husband purchased a wave curse in a fit of outrage in order to seek his revenge. He paddled over to the island of Teonimanu with four powerful waves attached to the front of his canoe and four on the back. Upon reaching the sand, he planted two taro plants and said that once the plants sprouted leaves, the curse would begin. Sure enough, several weeks later, enormous waves swept over the island and it was lost without a trace. Stories such as these have led to a new field of study called Geomythology which aims to tie together myth with the real geological event which drove the story. In the case of the Soloman Islands, scientists believe a seafloor earthquake triggered a train of multiple tsunami waves to sweep over Teonimanu. Despite the island being high above sea level, it was completely made of sand which made it easy to sweep away down the edge of a nearby underwater slope. Diving in the area shows evidence of this landslide with large underwater mounds found mysteriously under the waves. One of the most extraordinary factors is that stories such as this have been passed down over thousands of years and hundreds of generations without being lost or changed in the process.

The Mahabharata has the grand title of ‘the longest epic narrative in world literature’; a 4,000 year old poem which was originally written in Sanskrit on palm leaves. The (extremely) shortened version of this tells the tale of Lord Krishna leaving the city of Dwaraka after a victorious battle in order to rest in his heavenly abode. While he was away, the Arabian sea swept over the city and caused all trace of it to be lost to the ocean. This was considered yet another legend until 1963 when excavations in fact discovered Dwaraka intact resting under the waves off the Indian coast!

While many of the ocean’s myths have been debunked by modern scientists, there remain strange tales which are still unanswered. For example, in 2003, scientists tagged a nine foot long great white shark in order to follow its feeding pattern. Whilst checking the tracking device, the scientists saw that the shark had suddenly plummeted 2,000 feet within mere seconds while its body temperature shot up by 20°C. The only explanation so far is that this enormous shark was eaten by an even greater monster, such as a giant whale, which resides secretly in the deep. There have also been multiple reports of ghost scuba divers and 60 foot half-human, half-monster white sea creatures with both hands and tentacles. There is even thought to be man-eating seaweed in the Sargasson Sea where many empty boats have been seen floating with no signs of the crew, no evidence of anything being taken and the lifeboats still intact. The ocean will continue to amaze, intrigue, inspire and fascinate us every day and we must ensure this ancient yet still mysterious wonder is not lost before we can discover more of its secrets.

By Neve McCracken-Heywood