Chapter 5
Myth and reality come together in the story of the sea cow, and one cannot write about it without writing about mermaids.
The connection is so profound that their order is named after mermaids; they are sirenians, Sirens.
It has been suggested that the idea of sea cows as the humans of the ocean comes from their habit of observing the world from above the water: they float upright and raise their head above the surface, but unlike fish and whales they can turn their heads from side to side.
When sailors saw their heads appear out of the water, they realised that the creature in front of them could be neither a fish nor a whale, nor even a seal with a long snout, and from a distance the sea cow’s head does indeed resemble a human head far more than that of any other oceanic being.
Sea travellers of the day knew nothing of manatees or sea cows, but they had all heard stories of fish-tailed women who lived in the water, and with that the connection was established.
The first documented sighting of a sirenian is in an entry in Christopher Columbus’s log: he recalls that an admiral in his fleet once visited Hispaniola, where he saw three mermaids’ heads appear out of the water.
Granted, Columbus’s admiral notes that the mermaids were not nearly as beautiful as legend would have us believe.
It is true that the bald, round-headed manatee does not at all resemble the seductive Sirens of lore.
If one were to describe the sirenians in human terms, perhaps a balding, rather chubby old gentleman would be a more apt comparison, but despite this they are always associated with women.
In the Malay language, the sea cow is known as “dugong”, lady of the sea, and in the mythologies of island peoples, there are many stories of women turning into sea cows to help guide sailors away from danger.
Perhaps the reason for this is the sea cow’s breasts, which, unlike those of other aquatic mammals, are situated on their upper chest, just under their front limbs.
Perhaps this was enough for these sailors, and upon seeing the cows’ teats full of milk they could forget all about their bald heads and whiskers.
In the first European contact with manatees and sea cows, the animals are described as mermaids, but soon afterwards naturalists too are able to travel to unknown shores, and the first scientific descriptions of the sirenians begin to appear in the archives.
Steller knows the descriptions by those who travelled to the Americas, and Francisco Hernandez’s Nova plantarum, animalium et mineralium Mexicanorum historia contains two drawings of the manati gomara, a gentle sea mammal that grazes in the warm waters along the American coastline.
Steller’s creature is many times larger than this and lives in the wrong ocean, but he recognises its order, also known by the names Trichechus, Taurus marinus and Vacca marina.
A sturdy, rotund body and a tiny little head – no, there can be no doubt.
Floating in front of them is a giant manatee, an unknown sea cow native to these northern waters.
The crew of the St Peter has seen many creatures rise up from the depths, each more curious than the last. They have seen glowing fish, transparent fish, flying fish, fish the size of a house, monsters with tentacles long enough to wrap round even the largest warships, but none of them has ever heard of a sea cow the size of a whale.
Before the expedition set off, Steller interviewed people in Avacha Bay, asked them to describe all the local animals in exhaustive detail, and once they had told him about all the species they knew, they invented new ones, but this did not concern him.
The Academy is interested in ethnographical research too, so he wrote down all their stories, but never before has he heard tales of the giant sea cow.
How could such a magnificent creature go without mention on a shore known to man?
Now he knows with absolute certainty that they are lost, but his horror is mixed with a strange sense of elation: it means that the discovery of the sea cow is his alone.
Captain Commander Bering looks at the sky.
The wind is driving the clouds together, piling them one on top of the other, and a similar grey blanket has been pulled over his senses.
He tries to roll on his side, but he cannot, his body will not obey him but is falling apart in front of his eyes.
He catches a sweet smell coming from his flesh but tries to think about it as little as possible.
Sleep comes easily, thank God. Through his slumber he hears the naturalist’s frantic voice, Steller talking about unprecedented animals, underwater giants, then he drifts deeper into sleep and brushes the voice away as he might an insect.