In August 1817, people around Gloucester Harbour, Massachusetts, reported an unusually long animal moving through the water. Their accounts reached the Linnaean Society of New England, which organised a formal inquiry. Witnesses gave written, sworn statements about distances, shape, speed and movement. A small snake subsequently killed near the coast appeared to offer a specimen, and the committee proposed connecting it with the much larger creature reported offshore.
The surviving report is valuable because it preserves both the observations and the reasoning used to turn them into a zoological claim. It also preserves disagreements which a simple story of unanimous witnesses would obscure. The later rejection of the small snake as a new species undermined the proposed physical evidence, while leaving a different question: what had the people watching the harbour actually seen?
A committee, a questionnaire and sworn statements
The 1817 committee report names John Davis, Jacob Bigelow and Francis C. Gray as the investigators appointed on 18 August. The following day they asked Lonson Nash of Gloucester to take evidence. Witnesses were first to give their own recollections, then answer questions where necessary. Statements were to be read back, signed and sworn before a magistrate. The instructions also required separate examinations and no exchange of the testimony before the process was complete.
The twenty-five questions covered viewing time, duration, distance, colour, dimensions, exposed body parts and movement. They asked whether apparent bends were vertical or horizontal, and whether the animal had fins, legs, breathing openings, a mane or other appendages. This was a serious attempt to obtain comparable observations. It could reduce copying between the resulting statements, but it could not remove what witnesses had already heard during the public excitement.
Nash sent eight certified depositions on 28 August; three more statements were taken in Boston. The committee also pursued reports from other places and earlier years. This article concentrates on the Gloucester evidence and the small snake later associated with it. Those additional reports were comparisons assembled by the investigators, rather than proof that every account described one species.
Different animals within the descriptions
Mariner Amos Story described a sighting on 10 August near Ten Pound Island. He thought the head resembled a sea turtle’s and said he saw only ten or twelve feet of body. On 23 August, looking at an apparently stationary animal through a glass, he estimated at least fifty feet, with neither head nor tail visible. The two estimates concern different amounts of exposed material, not a measured change in an animal’s length.
Shipmaster Solomon Allen described sightings on 12, 13 and 14 August. He estimated eighty to ninety feet, likened the head to a rattlesnake’s but much larger, and reported about fifty separate exposed portions. His answer described sideways motion. Nash, who had watched from shore himself, explicitly disagreed. Nash thought the movement was vertical and said he had never seen more than seven or eight exposed portions at once.
Other descriptions do not resolve that difference. Epes Ellery reported vertical movement and apparent joints like small kegs. William H. Foster described a prong near the head on 17 August, but accepted when questioned that it might have been a tongue. Some witnesses thought the surface smooth, others rough or scaly. These are specific differences within the contemporary evidence, not objections invented by later sceptics.
Gaffney’s shot and Johnston’s limited view
Ship carpenter Matthew Gaffney gave one of the closest claimed encounters. In his deposition, he placed himself in a boat within thirty feet of the creature on the afternoon of 14 August. He estimated at least forty feet of visible length, with a dark upper head and pale underside. He fired at its head and believed he must have hit it. The animal then seemed to turn towards the boat before sinking and appearing farther away.
Gaffney’s confidence in his aim is not evidence of a recovered bullet wound or specimen. He acknowledged uncertainty about the creature’s surface because he had been concentrating on shooting. His statement says it did not become more shy afterwards. William B. Pearson, another witness who said he saw the shot, thought the animal did become more shy. Even accounts apparently describing the same action disagree over its consequences.
Seventeen-year-old John Johnston junior reported coming close to a long object while rowing towards a vessel on the evening of 17 August. He estimated at least fifty feet and described changing course to avoid it. But he expressly said there was insufficient light to describe the animal. That admission matters: proximity alone did not guarantee a detailed identification. A later composite picture cannot safely supply features which Johnston himself could not see.
The small snake near Loblolly Cove
The investigation changed after a snake was killed near Loblolly Cove on 27 September. Gorham Norwood’s deposition describes a boy drawing attention to it, adults pursuing it with a pitchfork and a stone, and its body subsequently being carried to Sandy Bay. People suggested it could be the offspring of the much-discussed sea serpent. The connection began as an interpretation of an unusual-looking land specimen found near the coast.
Nash checked the location rather than simply repeating an attractive detail. In an 8 October letter, he corrected information that the snake had been killed within twelve or fourteen feet of the sea: after pacing the ground, he placed the spot one hundred and fifty paces from high water. The same letter rejected an unsubstantiated report of the great serpent itself appearing on land. The original inquiry therefore contains both enthusiasm and attempts to correct circulating rumours.
The committee examined the small animal externally and internally. Its report describes an undulating spine, skin, scales, teeth and musculature, comparing it with the common black snake, Coluber constrictor. The authors interpreted the spinal structure as a distinguishing feature and named a new genus and species, Scoliophis atlanticus. Their anatomical plates record the actual small specimen; they do not show a giant animal captured in the harbour.
The inference and the later correction
The report’s concluding discussion asks whether the large and small serpents were the same species. It treats their apparent similarities as significant and explains discrepancies through differences of size, age or observation. A prong reported near the head is interpreted as a tongue, with its harpoon-like appearance attributed to optical illusion. The investigators also acknowledge objections: the enormous size difference, the land-versus-water sightings and the absence of obvious immaturity in the specimen.
Their conclusion, dated 11 October 1817, favours treating the two as members of one species until closer examination of the large animal reveals a decisive difference. That qualification should be retained. The committee had inspected a small snake and compared it with testimony; it had not established parentage or anatomically examined the giant reported offshore.
A later natural-history assessment appears in J. A. Allen’s catalogue in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, volume XII, page 184, presented in December 1868. Allen identifies the supposed new species as a deformed common black snake. He cites Jeffries Wyman’s assessment of a diseased spine and quotes James E. De Kay’s similar identification. This is Allen’s published review of the correction; the original Wyman communication is not independently reproduced here.
The correction removes the proposed specimen as support for a new giant-serpent species. It does not establish that every harbour witness saw the small snake, nor identify one ordinary animal behind every report. Estimates made across water, partial views, wakes, different lighting and prior expectations remain relevant when assessing the accounts. These are limits of the surviving observations, rather than a demonstrated reconstruction of each sighting.
Sources and related reading
The main source is the original 1817 report, particularly the examination rules, Gloucester depositions, Nash’s corrections and the final anatomical argument. Its title page, Gaffney deposition and concluding page were checked against the scan. Allen’s later catalogue supplies the rejection of the specimen as a distinct species. The Cape Ann Museum’s Summer 2017 historical article offers a later local overview and reproduces historical material; its modern photographs are not reused here.
Compare the Jersey Devil newspaper wave for another case where several attributed reports became a shared creature story. The Gloucester record is located broadly at the harbour and Cape Ann. No precise underwater position or map coordinate has been inferred from the witnesses’ varying directions and estimated distances.
Map location — approximate area: The pin uses Gloucester municipal area as a reference for the harbour and Cape Ann reports. It is a rounded locality reference, not an underwater animal or a particular witness sightline. Coordinate reference: U.S. Census Bureau 2025 Gazetteer representative area point. It gives no directions to private property.