Kintyre's very own sea monster

In the summer of 1899, there was one visitor to the Kilbrannan Sound who wasn't entirely welcome. Reports reached the national newspapers of a "huge sea monster with a head something like a monkey which suddenly swept amongst the boats, lashing the water into seething foam, and almost swamping several skiffs."

It pursued one of the Carradale skiffs in particular and, when the crew of the Puritan tried to frighten off the intruder, "it gulped at their oar with great gaping jaws". The skipper, Alexander (Sandy) Galbraith, was interviewed by one reporter in detail. Here is what was said: "It was a wonderful adventure, if a somewhat narrow escape," began Sandy, "and an experience to be remembered. The monster suddenly loomed up astern and followed in our wake for fully one hundred yards, coming so near as almost to touch our rudder. At first, we were quite 'chummy' with him, but his attentions were becoming too close, and Buchanan, here, made to butt him with an oar. Then the savage in him showed itself. He snapped at the oar like a cock at a grosset [a gooseberry], but my man was too smart for him." His length? "Well, he was about twice the length of the Puritan, sir; that's about 60 feet, and he'd be from twelve to fifteen feet beam - I mean, broad." What colour? "Gray, sir, very grey— just like your trousers.

But it's a lie to say, as the papers are saying, that he had "a big ugly head and hideous jaws." They were nothing special to speak of— that is, for his size" But you got a fright, I presume, when he made to swallow the oar and kept so hard astern?" "Sure," replied Sandy, "and you'd have got a bit of a fright, too, if you had been there. I guess he could have put us where Jonah was. And the fins! You ought to have seen the fins. Big enough, they were, for a comfortable lugsail for a small boat. I never saw such a fish — if it was a fish —in all my life, and I don't care if I shouldn't meet another."

Mr Galbraith's crew confirmed their skipper's narrative, and his father, who was present during the interview, and who is the oldest fisherman in Carradale, recalled an exciting adventure in his experience, when, a few years ago, a large porpoise, which was caught in the bag of the net, had a rope slipped around its tail, and then towed the skiff Oimara from off The Woods, on the Arran shore, to within a quarter of a mile of Carradale. The papers reported that the monster was still in the sound the following day when it was seen by the Carradale skiff Cluaran. It seems to have disappeared back to the deep after that.

Today's thinking is that the 'sea serpent' was most likely to have been a basking shark. It is believed that the story was reported in the Glasgow Herald Newspaper in May 1899.

This story was contributed by Roddy MacLean

More information on visiting the area can be found here.