ABSTRACT
The story of the sea serpent is cluttered with the hoaxes and they have helped to bring the subject into disrepute. The hoaxes are all remarkably similar and can easily be distinguished from the genuine reports. The creatures they describe are always impossibly huge and hybrid, described in excessive detail and in an over-dramatised manner. The myths and legends of the Eastern seas parallel the modern reports of sea serpents in a striking manner. A hoax might also be intended to ridicule someone, or even specifically to discredit the subject of sea serpents, but whatever its motives it seldom remains undiscovered for long. It seems that there have been about fifty hoaxes in the history of the sea serpent. By the end of the nineteenth century sea serpents had achieved a certain amount of respectability. They were even mentioned in the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1886.
