Portlandiana: Casco Bay's Sea Serpent. By Loren Coleman.

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MOST PORTLANDERSJUST DO NOT PAY TOO MUCH ATIENTION TO SEASERPENTSIGHTINGSANYMORE...

But it wasn't always so.

In May of 1780, Captain George Little of Boston saw a 45-foot-Iong serpentine form in Round Pond, Broad Bay, Maine. Captain Little said the man-sized head was carried about 5 feet out of the water. On another occasion, Edward Preble, an lS-year-old ensign who was later to become a commodore, had a very close encounter with a Maine sea serpent in 1779. Writing in his biography of Preble's life,1. Fenimore Cooper noted that Preble and a Captain Williams, on the Protector, were lying in a Maine bay on a clear and calm day "when a large serpent was discovered outside the ship. The animal was lying on the water quite motionless. After inspecting it with glasses for some time, Capt. Williams ordered Preble to man and arm a large boat ... Preble shoved off, and pulled directly towards the monster. As the boat neared it, the serpent raised its head about ten feet above the surface of the water, looking about it. It then began to move slowly away from the boat."

Preble fired a round at the creature, but this "produced no other effect than to quicken the speed of the monster."

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UPortland, Maine's sea serpent remains neglected. While the New England sea serpents sighted off Massachusetts's Capes Cod and Ann have been chronicled to such an extreme that the local creature is called uNellie," Casco Bay's very own sea monster does not even have a nickname despite its longer history. Perhaps our very own sea serpent should be called 'Cassie.'"

1. Fenimore Cooper noted that Preble occasionally mentioned his encounter to a few of his intimates in his later years, and merely felt he was "relating a fact that most people would be disposed to doubt."

The sightings have continued down through the years. On June 27th, 1818,fishermen told of a sea serpent coiled a league from Portland harbor. Again on July 2nd of that year, 1.Webber and R Hamilton saw it in Casco Bay.

In 1912, Mrs. F.W. Saunderson was one of two dozen passengers on board a steamer traveling from New York to Portland, Maine, who were surprised by an enormous head, long neck, and barrel-sized body appearing off the starboard side. "It rose about 20 feet above the water ... it remained erect for half a minute or so, and the head seemed to turn slowly as if the monster were taking a good look at its surroundings. Then it slipped slowly backward into the water, leaving scarcely a ripple," she related.

Down through the years, the appearances of the sea serpents have quietly occurred, and scarcely made a ripple.

I investigated one recent report early in 1985.Following an Appalachian Mountain Club talk I had given on cryptozoology (the study of hidden animals,literally monsters ), I was cautiously approached by an elderly Scandinavian man. He pulled me aside and told me of a friend of his who had seen a "sea serpent," and wondered if I would like to speak to the gentleman. Needless to say, I was interested and took to tracking down this man's friend. Finally, I was able to catch up to Ole Mikkelsen, presently of Portland, and talk to him about his hair-raising meeting with a denizen of the deep.

I knew the sighting was not a recent one, so when I started to interview Mikkelsen, Iexpected some vague date when I asked him when his encounter had occurred. Instead, the look in his eye reminded me of another faraway stare I had seen before. It was that same glaze I have seen come over people alive in 1963, when asked where they where and what were they doing when John F. Kennedy was shot. Mikkelsen was reliving his experience right before me, and the date exploded from his lips. "The fifth day of June, 1958! I won't soon forget it," he snapped.

Before me sat a trim, muscular, tanned man of 81. He told me he had been fishing since he was six years old, and continued up through last year. Born and raised in Den:.. mark, he had come to Maine in 1923, and he knew the waters of Casco Bay well. But he had never met anything before 1958 to prepare him for the monster he saw that June.

The 5th had start~d like most work days for Mikkelsen back then. Up early, he and his partner, Ejnar Haugaard, were out to sea before daybreak. It was about one half hour after sunrise, about 6 a.m., when they first saw "it." They were about five miles off Cape Elizabeth, only about 1~ miles south of the Portland Lightship: "Suddenly, we saw an object coming toward us out of a haze; we took it to be a submarine, but as'it came near we discovered it was some live thing. As it carne still nearer it dove down and a tail came up out of the water, and slowly it went down again. In about three or four minutes it surfaced again, came near us, and dove again. Then it came up once more about 125feet away from us, stopping as ifto look us over."

At that point, Haugaard shouted: "Give me the knife; if it comes near we will cut the nets and run for the lightship." "But luckily," Mikkelsen says, "it decided to swim in a nice tum to the south of us. We saw it disappear to the southeast in the haze."

Mikkelsen's metaphors are, not too surprisingly, ichthylogical. He tells me the thing's color was like that of a cusk, a light brown North Atlantic food fish, with a less dark underside to its neck. He says the tail was like a mackerel's. But of course he knows it was not a cusk or a mackerel. What he saw was well over 100 feet long, that he is sure of. The head he saw stuck out of the water and was broader than the long neck it was on. Interestingly, the name of the craft Mikkelsen owned was the Hirsthals, meaning "Stag's Neck"-a close description of this beast's long neck. He could not pick out any ears or eyes, but he is certain it could hear.

Mikkelsen reports that every time the Portland Lightship blew its mournful foghorn, as the anchored Coast Guard vessel did regularly, the creature turned its head in that direction. Haugaard and he had the thing in view for over 45 minutes, and he constantly S{lW the creature's head rotating toward the sound of the Lightship's hom.