Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other fields, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, and even text books. Wells was a socialist and his later works became increasingly political.
Wells has been described as The Father of Science Fiction, with one of his most famous books being The War of the Worlds. However, an early short story also covers assaults on humans by creatures from an alien environment.
This was The Sea Raiders, published in the Weekly Sun Literary Supplement on December 6, 1896.
It features a series of attacks by a species unknown to science – Haploteuthis ferox – responsible for a wave of bathing fatalities and boating accidents along the coast of Cornwall and Devon.
These monsters, first seen off South Devon, had
…rounded bodies (which) were new and ghastly-looking creatures, in shape somewhat resembling an octopus, with huge and very long and flexible tentacles, coiled copiously on the ground. The skin had a glistening texture, unpleasant to see, like shiny leather. The downward bend of the tentacle-surrounded mouth, the curious excrescence at the bend, the tentacles, and the large intelligent eyes, gave the creatures a grotesque suggestion of a face. They were the size of a fair-sized swine about the body, and the tentacles seemed to him to be many feet in length.
There were, he thinks, seven or eight at least of the creatures. Twenty yards beyond them, amid the surf of the now returning tide, two others were emerging from the sea.
And then, slowly uncoiling their tentacles, they all began moving towards him – creeping at first deliberately, and making a soft purring sound to each other.
Later in the story, the author considers their origin:
Hunger migration has, I know, been suggested as the force that drove them hither; but, for my own part, I prefer to believe the alternative theory (that) holds that a pack or shoal of these creatures may have become enamoured of human flesh by the accident of a foundered ship sinking among them, and have wandered in search of it out of their accustomed zone; first waylaying and following ships, and so coming to our shores in the wake of the Atlantic traffic.
In response to these attacks:
The coast was patrolled all that evening and night by four Preventive Service boats, the men in which were armed with harpoons and cutlasses, and as the evening advanced, a number of more or less similarly equipped expeditions, organised by private individuals, joined them.
The monsters are consequently seen off but are still out there…
On the 15th of June a dead carcass, almost complete, was washed ashore near Torquay, and a few days later a boat from the Marine Biological station, engaged in dredging off Plymouth, picked up a rotting specimen, slashed deeply with a cutlass wound.
But it is believed, and certainly it is to be hoped, that they have returned now, and returned for good, to the sunless depths of the middle seas, out of which they have so strangely and so mysteriously arisen.
Come and enjoy Devon – book a hotel and get away!
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