The great sea serpent. The sea serpent when first seen from H[er] M[ajesty's] S[hip] DAEDALUS – Vintage Print
![The great sea serpent. The sea serpent when first seen from H[er] M[ajesty's] S[hip] DAEDALUS, 1848 — antique engraving](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/d6/d6c539e6ca0e-L.webp)
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
A window into the past: The great sea serpent. The sea serpent when first seen from H[er] M[ajesty's] S[hip] DAEDALUS, preserved in this antique engraving. Sourced directly from the Library of Congress, it represents an authentic piece of documented history.
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The great sea serpent. The sea serpent when first seen from H[er] M[ajesty's] S[hip] DAEDALUS
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The engraving records a sighting from Her Majesty's Ship *Daedalus*, a naval vessel whose crew reported a large sea creature in 1848 that was drawn for the public. The Illustrated London News printed it on October 28, 1848, the kind of illustrated weekly that gave Victorian readers their main view of distant events. Sea serpent reports were popular in the mid-19th century, and newspapers often treated sightings by naval officers as especially credible, though the creature itself was never confirmed. The record's details are old and not fully verified, so the scene is best read as a record of what the crew claimed to see and how the press chose to present it.
| Created / published | 1848 |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 print : wood engraving. |
| Subjects | Illus. in: The Illustrated London News, 1848 Oct. 28. Reference copy may be in SSF - Sea monsters. This record contains unverified, old data from caption card. Caption card tracings: Ships--Other--DAEDALUS; Sea monsters; Shelf. |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 1,536 × 1,211 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-139851 |
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