In the early 1980s, sparked by a passionate love for my island home, I became obsessed with Key West history. But I never dreamed the obsession would lead me to discover a sea monster.
It wasn’t a living, swimming sea monster. It was fossilized, and I discovered its story rather than its actual bones. But for a writer like me, uncovering that story in a dusty pile of documents was almost as exciting as finding bones.
It began, as so much historic research did (and still does), at the local library. A low pink building on Fleming Street, the library held a treasure trove of files, photos and documents chronicling Key West’s past — and two patient women named Betty Bruce and Sylvia Knight, who guided my eager exploration of it.
Betty, founder of the library’s Local and Florida History section, had her own intriguing story. She and her husband, Toby Bruce, had been close friends of Ernest Hemingway during his Key West residence. After Hemingway died, Betty helped his widow evaluate and donate items he left behind upon departing from Key West.
When the sea monster first (metaphorically) reared its head, I was researching the Florida Keys’ 19th-century wreckers — who were sometimes maligned as lawless, but actually saved countless people trapped on sinking ships. Stories are still told about their navigational skills, proud spirit and courage in daring stormy seas to rescue crews, passengers and cargo.
In the Key West court of Judge William Marvin, the wreckers received monetary rewards for their work — with the amount determined by the value of the vessel and merchandise saved, and the degree of danger the wreckers faced due to weather and sea conditions.
In the 1800s the wrecking industry made Key West the richest city per capita in the United States. The wreckers’ exploits fascinated me — even before I discovered that, in 1845, they salvaged a sea monster.
The details were chronicled in several 1971 letters between Betty Bruce, Margaret Chapman of the Florida Historical Society, and a Missouri archivist named Frances Stadler. They were tucked into an old file, unmentioned in any wrecking books and articles I could find. Unearthing and telling the story became my quest.
The letters led to an 1840s diary published by an offbeat German fossil hunter named Dr. Albert Koch. In 1845, somewhere in Alabama, he found a fossilized serpent that measured 114 feet long.
He called it the Hydrarchos and made plans to ship it to New York to be exhibited. A letter from Frances Stadler to Betty Bruce, however, revealed that the ship carrying it — the Newark, bound for New York from Mobile and carrying 644 bales of cotton — had sunk in the waters off the Florida Keys.
For Koch, waiting in New York, the news was devastating. If wreckers had managed to reach the sinking Newark, he feared they had ignored his boxes of fossil bones and saved objects of more obvious value. Even if the Hydrarchos had been rescued, he couldn’t afford the fees the salvage court would assess for its return.
His concern was unfounded, because the wreckers had a surprise for Albert Koch. Not only did they risk their lives to save his precious Hydrarchos, but they decided to send the “giant sea serpent” to him in New York without charge — as a service to science and man.
When I wrote to Frances Stadler, she sent additional details from her husband’s book that translated Koch’s diary. My article telling the unusual tale was quickly published in a local magazine.
Though that was decades ago, sometimes I still wonder why the wreckers so generously returned the Hydrarchos. Koch believed they realized its importance to science, but maybe the true answer is more elemental. Battling the storm that sank the Newark, maybe they recognized the monster as a fellow creature of the sea — and simply wanted to see its old bones to safety.
