Mysteries and Sea Monsters

Mysteries and Sea Monsters gathers reports of ghost ships, phantom crews and creatures said to inhabit the world’s oceans. Graham Faiella examines traditions surrounding the Flying Dutchman, sea serpents and the many-tentacled kraken, placing these accounts within older maritime beliefs about the unknown below the waves.

The book also considers how sailors and storytellers used superstition, myth and legend to explain strange happenings before the 18th-century Enlightenment and Age of Reason. Its cases are presented as narratives that prompted disagreement between believers and sceptics, reflecting the enduring tension between seafaring experience, inherited folklore and claims of creatures beyond ordinary explanation.