Sea monster with ‘human-like head’ that ‘groaned’ discovered on seashore in UK

An “enormous” beast with a shell and a head like a human’s rocked up on Cornwall’s shores, sparking tall tales of sea monsters.

This whopping 48ft long monsters with peepers the colour of seaweed was said to have been beached during a howling storm in Porthleven.

A pair of lads hunting for shipwreck spoils got the fright of their lives when they stumbled across the monstrous creature.

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A document of the shocking discovery that happened in September 14, 1786 and has now been unearthed where the lad’s horror encounter is to be told once again.

The spooky sighting made waves all the way to the Hereford Journal by October that year, as a Cornish bloke recounted how the locals went medieval on the mysterious creature.

Dubbed ‘Sea Monster’, the old news piece goes: “A just and particular description of a very curious and most surprising sea monster driven on shore in Portleaven Bay (sic), on the coast of Cornwall, on the 14th of Sept. 1786, by the strong westerly winds and tempestuous weather, which continued to a violent degree for several days successively, and did much damage at that place and neighbourhood.”

The report divulges on how the two boys, following local tradition, were scouring for wreckage at dawn.

Perched on a cliff with a view over a sandy cove, they spotted something massive about a mile off, mistaking it at first for a shipwreck from the night before, battered by the savage seas.

“They immediately went towards the place with sanguine expectation of great success, and as they approached the spot (the breaking waves at times leaving it dry) they were both struck with the utmost consternation to perceive such motions as it was something which had life.”, reports Cornwall Live.

Terrified, the boys ran towards a group of men they knew and told them what they had witnessed.

The men did not believe them at first, but eventually decided to follow them and see the monster for themselves.

“A great number of people soon collected themselves into a body, and determined to go armed, some with large sticks and pokers, others with hatchets, spits, etc, which was, after some deliberation, carried into execution,” the article reports.

“On their coming near the spot they perceived it to be something living, as was represented, and it raised its head, which had not before been perceived, and appeared to direct its course towards them.

“All were alarmed some stood their ground, others possessed of greater fear turned back, they could see no legs to it, but it appeared to crawl on its belly, raising its body at times a little from the sand.”

The baffled locals couldn’t figure out what the creature was.

“Various were the opinions about this creature; some said it was a mermaid, others a whale but the greater number disbelieving the existence of the former, and adhering to the improbability of the latter, they were all equally at a loss,” the report detailed.

Deciding to investigate, the crowd approached the beast.

“When it was agreed to examine what it was, they all went towards it, and after an hour’s beating, stabbing it, etc, it expired with a groan. Its length was found to be from the top of its head to the end of its tail, 48 feet to inches, and its circumference in the largest part of the body 24 feet and a half.

“Its head was large, and prickly in the hinder part, and not formed much unlike that of a man; its eyes were greenish; its mouth large; its nose flat, and from its neck to the navel, resembling nearest to the human kind; its back was hard and more difficult to penetrate than the shell of a turtle; it had two short fore feet, formed like the paw of a monkey, and its hinder parts shaped measured full seven feet in width at the extent, and but five feet long.”

The fate of the creature’s body remains a mystery, with no clear record of any scientific examination.

“It is supposed a large quantity of oil will be produced from it, which, with the shell of its back, and its fins, are judged, if properly managed, to be of great value, and will be of considerable benefit to this neighbourhood,” remarked the Cornish correspondent who submitted the article.

“No one that has seen it knows its name, nor has any monster like it ever been described in record, or come within the knowledge of this kingdom.”

For years, there have been whispers of a 20ft long serpent-like beast, with dark skin, humps along its spine, and an elongated neck, lurking in the depths off Cornwall’s coast.

These bizarre encounters have sparked wild theories, including the possibility that plesiosaurs, the colossal sea reptiles from the dinosaur era believed extinct for 65 million years, might still roam our oceans.

The enigmatic sightings date back roughly 140 years, with reports of a long-necked creature ensnared by fishermen in Gerrans Bay.

And with the frequency of these accounts, it has woven them into local folklore, giving rise to the legend of Morgawr, the Cornish term for ‘sea giant’.

While science has yet to provide a definitive explanation for these sightings, some speculate that not just one, but multiple mysterious entities could be patrolling the waters of Cornwall.

The notion that these creatures might be relics from a prehistoric past first surfaced in July 1949.

Harold T. Wilkins and a companion reportedly had an encounter in a Cornwall tidal creek, stating they sighted “two remarkable saurians, 15-20ft long, just like a pair of Mesozoic plesiosaur”.

In 2002, John Holmes, an ex-worker at the Natural History Museum, claimed to have nabbed the reptilian curiosity on camera. The footage, which was shot three years earlier in Gerrans Bay, off the Roseland Peninsula, was duly released.

St Austell resident Mr Holmes posited at that juncture: “My pet theory is that it was a living fossil. I think that there is a group of plesiosaurs going around in the oceans of the world. All around Britain there have been sightings of sea serpents.”

Even today, folk around the globe still reckon, much like Mr Holmes did, that plesiosaurs somehow cheated death and persist. Perhaps the most famous supposed contemporary plesiosaur is the infamous Loch Ness monster.

Yet when Kiwi scientists tested water samples from the loch in 2019 as part of an attempt to take stock of its biological inhabitants, no evidence hinting at the existence of large creatures or indeed a plesiosaur could be found.

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