THE HONOLULU STAR-BULLETIN — NOVEMBER 08, 1912
REAL MERMAID IS CAPTURED ♢ Dies from Injury and Body Is
Stuffed and Placed in Case
Any fond gentleman have a mermaid?
New York Telegram: Among the 2300 and odd persons on board the White Star line steamship Olympic when she arrived from Southampton there was none more interesting than William Legg, engineer’s storekeeper of the mammoth vessel, who has followed the sea for more than thirty years. That Mr. Legg had with him on board the Olympic, safely guarded under a glass case, a real, bona fide mermaid, was only the least of the interesting things about the man.
While he was lighthouse keeper at the Steep Island lighthouse, off the Chinese coast, about 150 miles from Shanghai, Mr. Legg picked up on the afternoon of September 2, 1902, a living mermaid. The mermaid had been flung on the rocks and was still alive when picked up by Mr. Legg. The body below the waist was that of a fish, with a fin on the back and one on the stomach and a double finned tall. The body was of a dark greenish blue, without scales, while the head and shoulders were of the regulation human flesh. The mermaid was about 20 inches long and emitted a whining sound before it died, death being caused by a laceration in the throat, where it had been flung on a sharp rocky projection.
“As you can see by the stuffed body,” said Mr. Legg today. “the mermaid had a perfect human face, slightly
