Mermaids do not appear to have favored the American coast, yet one would suppose that they would have found the Gulf Stream a delightful place for their gambols. Of a mermaid that was once discovered in the harbor of St. John, Newfoundland, we have an entertaining account. It was seen by Captain Richard Whithourne, who described it in his book of voyages, a pamphlet published in London in 1622. The Captain was standing by the river side, when it came swiftly swimming toward him, and looked cheerfully up in his face. “It was like a woman by the face, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, arms, neck, and forehead, and in those parts as well proportioned.
ROUND ITS HEAD.
It had many blue streaks, resembling hair, but certainly it was not hair.” As it approached the Captain drew back, for fear that it might spring upon him, which he thought was its intention, whereupon it turned and swam away, looking back as it did so, and then he had an opportunity to see its back, which was “as square, white and smooth as the back of a man, and from the middle to the hinder part it was pointing, in proportion like a broad-headed arrow.” Captain Whitbourne’s mermaid, finding that she could not lure him, swam away to a boat in which there were a number of men, one of whom, William Hawkbridge, the Captain’s servant, who after wards became master of an Indiaman [East India Company ship], said the mermaid “put both its hands upon the boat, and did strive much to come into him and divers other in the boat, whereat they were afraid and one of them
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struck it a full blow on the head, whereby it fell off from them and came to other boats in the harbor.” The mermaid was not captured, and of course there was no opportunity to inspect it closely, and I cannot find that any other living specimen was ever seen on this side of the Atlantic.—[New York Post.
Sacramento Daily Record-Union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]), 12 Aug. 1882
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
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