No archive on strange sea monsters: Royal Navy of the UK

London, May 17 (ANI): Many sailors have claimed they have seen sea monsters but there is no official record of such sightings.

The Royal Navy of the UK reports such sightings to the UK Hydrographic Office.

However, Ministry of Defence officials have cleared that neither the Navy nor the Hydrographic Office maintain any such records on strange sea creatures.

The Ministry of Defence came up with the statement in response to a marine biologist's Freedom of Information (FOI) request about "abnormally large or dangerous sea monsters hundreds of metres under the sea" that had not been revealed to the public.

An official replied: "The RN (Royal Navy), and MoD in general, does not maintain any form of central repository of information purely devoted to sea monsters.

"Personnel might be inclined to record unusual sightings in ship's logs but there is, as far as we know, no actual requirement for them to do so, and it would be beyond the resource constraints of an FOI request to check every line of every RN log book for any such references since 2005.

"However, the RN does invite people to report sightings of marine mammals, and it's possible this could include unusual sightings.

"These are forwarded to the UK Hydrographic Office at Taunton."

However, the official said the National Archives in Kew, west London, contain several historic Royal Navy files about strange sightings on the oceans, reports the Telegraph.

These include an 1830 report sent to the Admiralty in London by the captain of the ship Rob Roy about a "great thundering big sea snake" measuring about 129ft long seen by his crew in the waters near the remote island of St Helena in the South Atlantic.

Another file records how Commander George Harrington, captain of the Castilian, saw "a monster of extraordinary length" rear its head out of the sea, again near St Helena, in 1857. (ANI)