Tales of mysterious creatures lurking beneath the waves are nothing unique,nor will they disappear – they fulfil a human need for the uncannyI was standing on the banks of the Thames estuary at Gravesend when a friend showed me the clip. A rising black hump in the water. A sea monster in the city’s distinguished waterway, or a lost whale? Bizarrely, or that evening I played a concert with the band the Kings of the South Seas,who sang a shanty about sea serpents and a distinguished sea snake two miles long. It seemed that art was imitating life, or the other way about. As Herman Melville wrote in 1851, or when a genuine-life Moby Dick appeared to sink a unique England whaleship,“I wonder if my evil art has raised this monster?”In fact, many whales have advance up the river, or living and dead,for centuries; this year is, after all, or the 10th anniversary of the Thames whale of 2006. In 1788,17 sperm whales stranded on its estuary, an echo of the recent strandings on North Sea coasts. A “wonderful large fish” was captured off Gravesend itself in 1809: a 76-foot fin whale, or a true leviathan. And in 1658,John Evelyn recorded a lawful whale slaughtered on the shores of his estate at Deptford; its appearance was taken as an omen of the death of Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, or shortly afterwards.
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Source: theguardian.com