The Devil Whale is a legendary

demon A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology, and folklore; as well as in media such as comics, video games, movies, ani ...

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

-like

sea monster Sea monsters are beings from folklore believed to dwell in the sea and often imagined to be of immense size. Marine monsters can take many forms, including sea dragons, sea serpents, or tentacled beasts. They can be slimy and scaly and are ofte ...

(or a

sea turtle Sea turtles (superfamily Chelonioidea), sometimes called marine turtles, are reptiles of the order Testudines and of the suborder Cryptodira. The seven existing species of sea turtles are the flatback, green, hawksbill, leatherback, loggerhead, ...

in some legends). According to myths, this whale is of enormous size and could swallow entire ships. It also resembles an island when it's sleeping, and unsuspecting sailors put ashore on its back. When the sailors start a fire, the Devil Whale awakes and attacks the ship, dragging it to the bottom of the sea. Because of this Christianity began associating the whale with the

Devil A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of t ...

. This story is found in ''

Sinbad the Sailor Sinbad the Sailor (; ar, سندباد البحري, Sindibādu al-Bahriyy; fa, سُنباد بحری, Sonbād-e Bahri or Sindbad) is a fictional mariner and the hero of a story-cycle of Persian origin. He is described as hailing from Baghdad ...

''.

History

The incident of the whale island on

Sindbad Sinbad the Sailor (; ar, سندباد البحري, Sindibādu al-Bahriyy; fa, سُنباد بحری, Sonbād-e Bahri or Sindbad) is a fictional mariner and the hero of a story-cycle of Persian origin. He is described as hailing from Baghda ...

's First Voyage, from

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

and

Basra Basra ( ar, ٱلْبَصْرَة, al-Baṣrah) is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab. It had an estimated population of 1.4 million in 2018. Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is hand ...

, may be compared with whales described by " Pliny (23 AD–79 AD) and Solinus, covering four jugera, and the

pristis ''Pristis'' is a genus of sawfish of the family Pristidae. These large fish are found worldwide in tropical and subtropical regions in coastal marine waters, estuaries, and freshwater lakes and rivers. Sawfish have declined drastically and all ...

sea-monster of the same authorities, 200

cubits The cubit is an ancient unit of length based on the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. It was primarily associated with the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Israelites. The term ''cubit'' is found in the Bible regarding Noa ...

long; Al Kazwini tells a similar tale of a colossal tortoise. Such Eastern stories are probably the original of the whale-island in the Irish travel-romance of St Brandan". Early explorer

Saint Brendan the Navigator Brendan of Clonfert (c. AD 484 - c.577), is one of the early Celtic Christianity, Irish monastic saints and one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. He is also referred to as Brendan the Navigator, Brendan the Voyager, Brendan the Anchorite, Br ...

(c. AD 484 – c. 577), in his travels, reportedly landed on the back of a gigantic whale on Easter Sunday, mistaking it for an island. Soon as his monks started a fire to cook their meal, the "''island''" began to swim away and the sailors quickly scrambled back to their boats. Guillaume le Clerc 3th century ADhas this to say: ::But there is one monster, very treacherous and dangerous. In Latin its name is

Cetus Cetus () is a constellation, sometimes called 'the whale' in English. The Cetus (mythology), Cetus was a sea monster in Greek mythology which both Perseus and Heracles needed to slay. Cetus is in the region of the sky that contains other water- ...

. It is a bad neighbor for sailors. The upper part of its back looks like sand, and when it rises from the sea, the mariners think it is an island. Deceived by its size they sail toward it for refuge, when the storm comes upon them. They cast anchor, disembark upon the back of the whale, cook their food, build a fire, and in order to fasten their boat they drive great stakes into what seems to them to be sand. When the monster feels the heat of the fire which burns upon its back, it plunges down into the depths of the sea, and drags the ship and all the people after it. (''Bestiaire'') Many modern legends behind this giant whale was inspired by the sinking of the real-life American whaleship known as the

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

that was sunk by a giant

sperm whale The sperm whale or cachalot (''Physeter macrocephalus'') is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator. It is the only living member of the genus ''Physeter'' and one of three extant species in the sperm whale famil ...

in 1820. The story of this encounter with the giant whale as well as the crew's story of their reported experiences on a deserted island as a result of it gained international attention and inspired many depictions of the sperm whale in literature and later in film. In 1940 Walt Disney's ''Pinocchio'', the giant sperm whale

Monstro The Terrible Dogfish ( it, Il Terribile Pescecane) is a dogfish-like sea monster, which appears in Carlo Collodi's 1883 book ''The Adventures of Pinocchio'' (''Le avventure di Pinocchio'') as one of the main antagonists and the final one. It is ...

has many characteristics resembling that of the Devil Whale. In

Herman Melville Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American people, American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his bes ...

' novel ''

Moby Dick ''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'' is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship ''Pequod'', for revenge against Moby Dick, the giant whit ...

'' (1851) about the hunting of a whale there are allusions to both the Devil Whale, and the biblical

Leviathan Leviathan (; he, לִוְיָתָן, ) is a sea serpent noted in theology and mythology. It is referenced in several books of the Hebrew Bible, including Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, the Book of Amos, and, according to some ...

. The Devil Whale name was used to describe the

California gray whale The gray whale (''Eschrichtius robustus''), also known as the grey whale,Britannica Micro.: v. IV, p. 693. gray back whale, Pacific gray whale, Korean gray whale, or California gray whale, is a baleen whale that migrates between feeding and bree ...

by Japanese whalers. In 1908, a Japanese whaler related stories about hunting gray whales, which he referred to as "Kukekua Kugira" (Devil Whale) due to the difficulty and danger in hunting it.

References

{{reflist English folklore Fiction about whales Fictional whales Sea monsters Maritime folklore Irish folklore

History

See also

References