It’s not everyday you stumble across a monster but that’s exactly what happened on the shores of Thimble Tickle, NL, November 2nd, 1878.

The Story

It was a Saturday morning when Joseph Martin and Stephen Sperring set out in their dory. They were near Thimble Tickle — a narrow stretch of water near what is now called Glover’s Harbour.

Everything was going well until they spotted debris in the water. The men were immediately concerned — where there was debris there was often disaster. They worried a boat had wrecked. They quickly adjusted course for the wreckage to see if there was something they could do, or at least understand what had happened.

As they drew nearer they couldn’t understand what they were seeing

What was it? Maybe a canvas sail? They couldn’t tell. It seemed like it was moving.

The closer they got, the more unbelievable it became.

A Stunning Discovery

This was no wreckage, it was an animal! A huge creature with glassy, dinner plate sized eyes and long, thrashing tentacles.

They’d never seen anything like it. Almost.

It was clearly a squid, they’d seen enough squid to know that, but this was a enormous — a giant squid. It dwarfed their tiny boat And the squid’s arms and tentacles were shooting in all directions. The men were amazed and frightened.

As they watched jets of water coursed through the squid’s siphon and the surrounding sea turned black with clouds of ink. Suddenly they understood: the squid was stuck. It was in water too shallow to support it and it was trying, desperately, to escape.

To make matters worse, the tide was still receding.

The men knew the creature stood virtually no chance of escape — and the men weren’t sure they wanted it to.

A Sad Ending

I think it would be nice to end this story with a tale of how the men tried to pull the creature to deeper water but this isn’t that kind of story.

It wasn’t that kind of time.

In 1878 the giant squid was more commonly called the devil-fish and it was a dangerous and feared creature. Giant squid had been known to grab fishing boats and, right before their eyes, the men were witnessing the amazing force of the squid’s tentacles. It was a fearsome creature and definitely not the kind of animal the men were going to risk their lives to save.

The men did have a plan though — they were going to catch the squid.

Keeping their distance from the flailing arms, the men approached the giant squid. Tossing a grapnel, they managed to hook it and tie it to a tree on shore. They wanted to make sure this rare find didn’t disappear— after all, who would even believe their tale without some proof.

The animal kept struggling but, by low tide, its body was almost completely exposed and the giant squid died.

They examined the carcass. It was 55-ft in length — the body was 20ft long while the tentacles added an extra 35ft (about the length of a school bus).

What happened to the giant squid?

Biologists and naturalists would have relished the opportunity to examine a giant squid but Thimble Tickle was a long way from any scientific institution and, by the time word of the stranding reached the outside world, the squid was long gone.

It had been chopped up, and a portion of it became a giant feast… for the community’s dogs.

Legacy

Dog food seems like an inauspicious ending for such a rare and storied creature. That said, it speaks to the reality of coastal living in Newfoundland in the 19th century — people had to subsist off the land and sea and it wasn’t easy to make ends meet. People could not afford to pass up a resource, no matter how unusual.

If it’s any consolation to the squid, and I can’t imagine why it would be, it’s never been forgotten.

144 years later, we’re still telling it’s story. It even made it to the Guinness Book of Records as the largest invertebrate. On top of that, its been immortalized as a life-sized sculpture at Glover’s Harbour which, in turn, was featured on a Canadian stamp.

It’s a strange tale, really — those fisherman could hardly have guessed what that Saturday morning had in store for them nor the legacy of the century-spanning story of ‘the one that didn’t get away’.

More Stories