Sea Monster Vs. Submarine

Brent Swancer

 

The oceans of the world have long been the alleged haunt of various merfolk, sea serpents, sea monsters, and assorted hulking, mysterious beasts beyond the fringes of our understanding. Since mankind first took to the seas and started our odyssey into this vast, watery domain, sailors have been captivated by such fantastical creatures, and maritime history and folklore is thickly steeped in countless tales of mysterious monsters from the depths. However, sometimes these creatures jump from out of the cloudy realm of legend and fleetingly glimpsed anomalies to come violently crashing into our reality, indeed into our nightmares. Such is the story of the numerous accounts of sea monsters boldly attacking seagoing vessels such as boats, ships, and yes, even submarines. In fact some of the most harrowing sea monster accounts there are involve submarines. It seems that in some cases, mysterious sea creatures do not appreciate sharing the depths with our steel contraptions. How did these encounters between man and beast turn out? Let’s take a look.

Certainly one of the most well-known accounts of an alleged sea monster attack on a submarine occurred during World War I, when German submarines prowled the waters of the Atlantic looking to make trouble. For one German submarine, the UB-85, on April 30, 1918 it was trouble that found them. The story goes that the submarine was discovered floating on the surface by the British patrol boat Coreopsis. At the time the U-boats, as the German submarines were called, were a fairly novel and highly feared weapon of war, known for being invisible, deadly killers of the high seas, so it was quite a fortunate turn of events for the British to come across one that was basically a sitting duck out in plain view. They immediately fired upon it and the submarine began sinking without any attempt to retaliate. Things became even weirder when the British vessel approached and the submarine crew quickly surrendered without any resistance. The crew of the British ship was mystified. The only time most crews saw a U-boat coming was when a torpedo was snaking through the sea towards them, and to have a whole submarine just sit and wait to be sunk and its crew apprehended without incident was mind bogglingly strange.

It wasn’t until the Germans were brought aboard and the U-boat captain, a Captain Gunther Krech, was questioned that the reason became both clearer and more bizarre. Krech allegedly reported that the submarine had surfaced during the night for the purpose of recharging its batteries, during which there had been a violent surge of frothing water off the starboard bow. When Kech and some crew members had gone to investigate, a creature the captain described as a “strange beast” had suddenly erupted forth from the cold, dark water and begun clambering up the side of the ship, which had caused the whole submarine to start listing to the side. The beast was described as being enormous, with a small head with large eyes deeply set in a horned skull and a large mouth with sharp teeth that glinted in the moonlight. This strange monster was then claimed to have reached the forward mount gun and to have begun ferociously attacking it, chomping down on the weapon with its formidable jaws and thrashing back and forth.

The submarine UB-85

 

Fearing that the submarine would continue to tilt under the creature’s weight until the open hatch hit the sea and sank the sub, all available crewmen had opened fire on the mysterious attacker, yet the thing had refused to let go of the gun mount. It apparently had taken a sustained, intense volley of gunfire to finally make the monster relinquish its iron grip, after which it disappeared into the black sea, its ultimate fate unknown. Final score: Submarine-1, Sea Monster-0.

Read the rest of this article at - http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/02/sea-monster-versus-submarine/