07/24/2026
Ladies and Gentlemen! I give you…
Sea Spark! The Plymouth Sea Serpent
She’s made from 99% recycled materials and upcycled art supplies (and 1% hot glue 😆), including: cardboard, paper grocery bags, foam board, homemade paper, flattened beer bottle caps, hand cut scales from paint pour skins, and leftover florals from other mixed media projects in the past. She’s my submission for the Sustainable Sculpture Competition for the Plymouth Seafood Festival. The competition is organized by All Good Art, Plymouth Downtown Waterfront District and Sustainable Plymouth.
Here’s a bit of backstory behind the Plymouth Sea Serpent.
In his famous journals, Henry David Thoreau documented a sea serpent sighting originally recounted to him by Benjamin Marston Watson, a neighbor and prominent agriculturist in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Watson told Thoreau about a sea monster famously spotted in the bay separating Manomet and Plymouth Beach. According to the historical accounts and folklorists, the sighting originated with a "perfectly reliable" local boatman, though the legend also connects to none other than Daniel Webster and his own boatman, Seth Peterson, who sailed the local waters.
Instead of viewing the creature as a mere biological oddity, Thoreau—a transcendentalist who viewed the ocean as a wilder, more mysterious realm than the untamed jungles—used the anecdote to muse on the unknown mysteries still lurking off the New England coastline. In his writings on New England folklore, he expressed deep fascination with how much of the marine world remained a mystery to the modern era.
From Thoreau's Journal: 14-Jun-1857
“B.M. Watson tells me that he learns from pretty good authority that Webster once saw the sea-serpent. It seems it was first seen, in the bay between Manomet and Plymouth Beach, by a perfectly reliable witness (many years ago), who was accustomed to look out on the sea with his glass every morning the first thing as regularly as he ate his breakfast. One morning he saw this monster, with a head somewhat like a horse’s raised some six feet above the water, and his body the size of a cask trailing behind. He was careering over the bay, chasing the mackerel, which ran ashore in their fright and were washed up and died in great numbers. The story is that Webster had appointed to meet some Plymouth gentlemen at Manomet and spend the day fishing with them. After the fishing was [over], he set out to return to Duxbury in his sailboat with Peterson, as he had come, and on the way they saw the sea-serpent, which answered to the common account of this creature. It passed directly across their bows only six or seven rods off and then disappeared. On the sail homeward, Webster having had time to reflect on what had occurred, at length said to Peterson, “For God’s sake, never say a word about this to any one, for if it should be known that I have seen the sea-serpent, I should never hear the last of it, but wherever I went should have to tell the story to every one I met.” So it has not leaked out till now.”
Also enjoy a fun retelling of this tale by New England Legends Podcast! 🙂
https://ournewenglandlegends.com/podcast-392-the-plymouth-sea-serpent/
