On the 10th of January, 1877, the following affidavit was made before Mr. Raffles, magistrate, at Liverpool:
"We, the undersigned officers and crew of the barque 'Pauline' (of London), of Liverpool, in the county of Lancaster, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, do solemnly and sincerely declare that, on July 8, 1875, in lat. 5° 13' S., long. 35° W., we observed three large sperm whales, and one of them was gripped round the body with two turns of what appeared to be a huge serpent. The head and tail appeared to have a length beyond the coils of about thirty feet, and its girth eight feet or nine feet. The serpent whirled its victim round and round for about fifteen minutes, and then suddenly dragged the whale to the bottom, head first.
"GEO. DREVAR, Master; HORATIO THOMPSON, JOHN HENDERSON LANDELLS, OWEN BAKER, and WILLIAM LEWARN.
"Again, on July 13, a similar serpent was seen, about two hundred yards off, shooting itself along the surface, head and neck being out of the water several feet. This was seen only by the captain and one ordinary seaman.
"A few moments after it was seen some 60 feet elevated perpendicularly in the air by the chief officer and the following seamen:--Horatio Thompson, Owen Baker, Wm. Lewarn. And we make this solemn declaration, conscientiously believing the same to be true."
In the _Illustrated London News_, of November 20th, 1875, there had previously appeared a letter from the Rev. E. L. Penny, Chaplain to H.M.S. _London_, at Zanzibar, describing this occurrence and also the representation of a sketch (which I am kindly permitted to reproduce here), drawn by him from the descriptions given by the captain and crew of the _Pauline_. "The whale," he said, "should have been placed deeper in the water, but he would then have been unable to depict so clearly the manner in which the animal was attacked." He adds that, "Captain Drevar is a singularly able and observant man, and those of the crew and officers with whom he conversed were singularly intelligent; nor did any of their descriptions vary from one another in the least: there were no discrepancies." The event took place whilst their vessel was on her way from Shields to Zanzibar, with a cargo of coals, for the use of H.M.S. _London_, then the guard ship on that station.