Posted inMaritime & Naval History Mysteries & Unexplained Ship Histories

The Mystery of the Cyclops

The Unexplained Disappearance of the United States Naval Collier Causes a Marine Expert to Discuss the Fantastic Possibilities of Encounters Between Ships and Gigantic Octopuses

old illustration of a giant octopus wrapping around a 3-masted sailing ship.

The disappearance of the great United States naval collier Cyclops during the year 1918 has now been ranked among the famous unexplained mysteries of the sea, like the fate of the crew of the brig Marie Celeste and many another ocean tragedy.

The Cyclops, a ship of 19,000 tons, sailed from Barbados in the West Indies on March 4 last on war duty and has never been reported since. This great steel ship, with all her crew and arms and equipment, her wireless and her boats has vanished from the seas just as feeble sailing ships did in ancient times when the ocean was an uncharted wilderness.

By order of the Navy Department all available naval craft In Southern waters have been making a dragnet for the ship, but steadily the conviction grows among officials that the great modern mystery of the sea will remain unsolved.

Posted inDaily News

Worth Knowing

Certain native animals of New Zealand seem to give way before those from Europe with which they are brought in contact. The Norway rat has completely exterminated the native rat…
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Wild Boar Menace in Rhenish Prussia

COBLENZ, Feb. 5 — Judging by the number of letters from German civilians of the American occupied asking for special permits to carry firearms for hunting purposes, the wild boars in Rhenish Prussia more numerous this season than in many years. In fact, several letters written to the headquarters of the Third American Army stated that the wild boar menace this winter greater than any other year in German history.

Every day from various parts of the occupied territory letters into Coblenz from German civilians who have been deprived of their usual winter sport by the American decree forbidding civilians to have possession of either rifles or revolvers. In nearly every case the letters agree that the wild boars are overrunning the country, destroying crops and eating certain winter growing plants which should be preserved for the horses and cattle.

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Two Amazons

Bellows Falls Times, Bellows Falls, VT, January 7, 1876

About a year ago a man named Jonas Butler went into the wild region around the head waters of the Delaware River, about twenty miles above Delhi, N. Y., for the purpose of cutting railroad ties and peeling bark, on contract for some parties in Greene County. He erected a log cabin, where he and his wife, his daughter Jennie, aged sixteen, and an infant child made their home.

On Sunday, Dec. 19, Butler was absent from home, and about 5 o’clock in the afternoon of that day Mrs. Butler and her daughter heard an unusual commotion among the pigs in the pen, a log inclosure a few rods away from the house.