Abstract
In 1881 George Drevar, a merchant captain who had survived a shipwreck in the Cape Verde Islands, was tried at the Old Bailey for libel and threatening the life of the Commissioner of Wreck, Henry Cadogan Rothery, in part because of a disagreement over the existence of the great sea serpent. This article explains the background to the trial, including Drevar’s own sea serpent sightings, the trial’s eventual outcome and some later related events in Drevar’s life. Drevar’s actions seem to have been driven by mental illness caused by the stress of shipwreck coupled with a fervent religiosity with regard to the sea serpent.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 308-323 |
| Journal | Mariner's Mirror |
| Volume | 107 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 20 Jul 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Keywords
- Sea serpents
- Cryptozoology
- Sea monsters
- Eyewitness testimony
- Pauline
- Norfolk
- Mental health
- Sperm whales
Access to Document
- Paxton_Mariner'sMirror_Driven-mad-CC
Copyright © 2021 The Author. Published by Informa UK. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.