THE MAN WHO SAW A SEASERPENT

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2907, 20 October 1916, Page 4

THE MAN WHO SAW A SEASERPENT

CAPTAIN MILLER IN PORT. It was in April last year that quite a sensation was caused in Australia, by a report tliafc Captain Miller, of tho steamer Dimboola, when fourteen hours out from Port Adelaide, bound to the West, had sighted the elusive sea-ser-pent, or, at least, a very large fish vory closely resembling what might be called a sea-serpent, of which tales have been told for hundreds of years past. In Captain Miller's case ( however, he was supported by the evidence of tho officers, crew, and passengers of tho Dim-' boola,. all of whom distinctly saw the. strange elongated denizen of the deep sporting in the calm sea about a mile off the ship in perfectly clear weather. Captain Miller, of the Dimboola, is at present in charge of tho collier Woolgar, carrying coal from Westpo'rt to the Orient, for the use of the Admiralty.. Without going back on one of his statements, Captain Miller. says that /there was no doubt about the existence of tho strange fish that ho saw. To him and others who saw it, it resembled a monster conger-eel, able to rear itself vertically out of the water to a height of between 20 and 30 feet, and then diving again in an eel-like 'manner. Ho-now takes a humorous view of the manner in whioli his news was reoeived, and says l that he was given such a hot time by the Press and his friends that if the Fiend'himself appeared out of the sea he would not report it. • . "Only recently," said Captain Miller to a Dominion reporter, "the . ship Endeavour, when seeking out fishing grounds, drew up a . Etrange-lookins fish from a great depth. It resembled a, large 'hedge-hog, with a big swollen, body, covered with spines. As soon as this strange thing was lifted out of tha trawl into the air it burst. The chances are that it was a creature adapted to withstand the pressure of the water at a groat depth, and so soon as that pressure was relieved tho interior forces burst the shell."