In 1915, the German submarine U-28 was doing what German subs were often doing back then--torpedoing British ships. One such unfortunate victim was the Iberian, which quickly sank below the waves. Approximately 25 seconds later, it exploded, sending debris into the air along with something else as described in the German captain's log translated below:
"On July 30, 1915, our U-28 torpedoed the British steamer Iberian, which was carrying a rich cargo across the North Atlantic. The steamer sank so swiftly that its bow stuck up almost vertically into the air. Moments later the hull of the Iberian disappeared. The wreckage remained beneath the water for approximately twenty-five seconds, at a depth that was clearly impossible to assess, when suddenly there was a violent explosion, which shot pieces of debris - among them a gigantic aquatic animal - out of the water to a height of approximately 80-feet [24 meters]."
"At that moment I had with me in the conning tower six of my officers of the watch, including the chief engineer, the navigator, and the helmsman. Simultaneously we all drew one another's attention to this wonder of the seas, which was writhing and struggling among the debris. We were unable to identify the creature, but all of us agreed that it resembled an aquatic crocodile, which was about 60-feet [18 meters] long, with four limbs resembling large webbed feet, a long, pointed tail and a head which also tapered to a point. Unfortunately we were not able to take a photograph, for the animal sank out of sight after ten or fifteen seconds."
There are a limited number of explanations for this phenomenon. The first, and most obvious one, is that the captain was lying. This theory appears problematical, both for the fact that there would be no reason for the captain to concoct such a tale and for the fact that the German Navy strongly discouraged its officers from using their official logs as works of fiction.
It is equally implausible that all of the individuals who saw the creature suffered from some sort of mass hallucination.
Another alternative would be that the captain and the other crew members saw a whale or other ordinary large sea creature--again unlikely, as no marine animal known to be alive in modern times is sixty feet long and resembles a crocodile with a pointed snout, four limbs, and a pointed tail.
A further possibility is that it was in fact a saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus)--the huge leviathan known to viewers of Paul Hogan movies and pictured below. Again this scenario is implausible, as the largest known examples are no more than 23 feet (7 meters) in length and only inhabit the warm tropical waters of the Southern Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Embed from Getty Images
Finally, the one remaining explanation is that the creature might have been a prehistoric animal who failed to realize that it was supposed to be extinct. One obvious candidate would be a mosasaur (pictured below), who viewers of Jurassic World will remember as one scaly guy who really kicked some butt. Mosasaurs reached (or, cueing in dramatic music, should I have used the present tense "reach"?) sixty feet long--150% of the length of an adult Tyrannosaurus rex--and do look very crocodilian. There are also many other reptiles from the past which, if not actually huge crocodilians, very closely resembled them.
Is it in fact possible that animals long thought to be extinct are still denizens of the deep? There is a lot of ocean out there, and the vast majority of it has never been explored below the surface. As Sherlock Holmes stated, "When you have eliminated the impossible, then what is left must be the truth."
 |
By Nobu Tamura (http://spinops.blogspot.com) (Own work)
[GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) via Wikimedia Commons |
