silkiesightings

Sixteenth Century

Is it possible that the Great Silkie of Sule Skerrie is not merely a legend? Is it silkies that these historic documents are describing?During the explorations and discoveries of the sixteenth century many tales of mermaids were brought back from the sea, along with exaggerated accounts of sea monsters and other wonders. However, in 1608 Henry Hudson, sailing on his second voyage in search of a Northeast Passage to China, recorded a sighting of a mermaid in the Barents Sea. According to the two seamen, Thomas Hilles and Robert Raynar, who saw her:
"Her back and breasts were like a woman's and her skin very white; and long hair hanging down behinde, of colour blacke; in her going down they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a porpoise, and speckled like a macrell."

During this same year another mermaid was sighted, also in the North Atlantic, off Newfoundland.
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