Welcome back to Scary Animal Attacks!
Today’s episode takes us to the Eastern Pacific Ocean, 750 miles west of the coast
of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown.
If the name of Freetown sounds familiar, it was the location of our episode on the chimpanzee
attack at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Reserve.
The ocean in this location varies between 13,000 feet and 16,000 feet in depth.
That is nearly 3 miles deep.
The ocean floor is pimpled with underwater mountains and valleys and the animal life
varies greatly based on the depth.
As the sea deepens the scale of the creatures it can support increases dramatically.
The Blue Fin Tuna can be as long as 15 feet and weigh 2,000 pounds in this area.
SunFish here can weigh as much as 4500 pounds.
Sailfish and swordfish are plentiful and deep sea giants like blue whales thrive.
In this beautiful and isolated ocean location, the events of our episode are set.
On March 25th, 1941 at 8 AM, the British ship Brittania was sailing from Liverpool to Bombay,
India when it ran into the German cruiser, The Thor.
The Thor was what is called an Auxiliary Cruiser.
It was a merchant ship with hidden armaments designed to attack transport ships The Allies
were using to support the war effort.
From a distance it would appear to be a transport ship, but within range its armaments would
be revealed and used to attack.
The Thor was wreaking havoc along the coasts of Brazil and Africa, and now had its sights
set on The Brittania.
The battle was only an hour and a half in length and ended with The Brittania striking
her colors and all 500 souls aboard abandoning ship.
The captain of the Thor assumed that a distress signal had been sent out and due to its light
armament fired a final salvo to sink The Britannia and fled the area before larger battle ships
could converge, without following the usual protocol of rescuing survivors.
There were no Allied ships signaled to rescue the survivors.
They were abandoned to drift in their rafts on the open sea.
The rescue crafts were overloaded with the surviving sailors so much so that several
men floated alongside each raft, hanging on to the side.
In the raft occupied by Lieutenant R.E.G.
Cox, 12 soldiers spilled over the side and filled every space inside.
As the day passed and the men waited for rescue the direness of their situation began to weigh
heavy on their minds.
The sun set and temperatures cooled, the ocean began to come to life with the noise and actions
of unseen creatures.
On the second day adrift, the sailors were scorched by the sun and had no supplies for
reprieve.
The waves danced but no help came to the men and they passed the time by rotating positions
in the raft or floating to stay cool.
On the third day, Sailor Cox took his turn floating.
He noticed a large fleshy mass approaching him.
He splashed his hands in the water trying to frighten this mysterious creature away
from him.
As he struck the water around him, Cox felt searing pain starting from his hand and radiating
up his arm.
Next his leg exploded in burning excruciation.
He writhed and yelled as the other sailors pulled him aboard the raft.
He rubbed his afflicted hand along his clothes and felt a jelly-like substance smearing over
every surface he touched.
He then rubbed his ailing arm over his hair trying to find a solution from the pain and
in so doing rubbed the jellied toxins of the Portugese Manowar over part of his face and
mouth.
Some of the jelly went into his mouth and slid down his throat before he could stop
it.
His stomach instantly cramped with the familiar pain present in his arm.
The unrelenting sun torched his exposed skin compounding the pain and torture afflicted
by the toxic jellyfish.
On the fourth day, one of the Indian sailors was floating alongside the raft.
A large shark attacked him and bit off his legs.
He quickly bled to death and drifted away from the raft to be consumed by the sea creatures
seemingly stalking the sailors from beneath the waves.
The fourth night, one of the sailors was holding on to the tether from the side of the raft
that R.E.G Cox was inside.
As the sailor floated Sailor Cox witnessed a large tentacle, slightly larger than a man's
arm, appear and grope around as if searching for something.
As it poked and prodded blindly it located the floating sailor.
The tentacles quickly wrapped around the dehydrated and weakened sailor and began pulling him
under.
He screamed in terror as he was pulled down and his shipmates were powerless to stop it.
He disappeared into the inky depth of the night seas.
The men were stunned and fearful after witnessing such a terrizing attack and jostled in their
raft as they looked around to see what creature had executed such a brazen assault.
Within just a few minutes, another tentacle appeared and quickly wrapped itself around
the leg of Sailor Cox.
Pain shot through his body as he struggled to free himself, knowing now what would happen
if he could not.
As the other sailors grabbed him the tentacle suddenly released its grip on him.
The suckers from the tentacle had left circular wounds on his leg.
Where the serrated teeth of the suckers had made contact with Cox’s leg, he was missing
skin and tissues about the size of a penny.
Over the past few days, the survivors who numbered twelve, had now dwindled to three.
The sailors cooked beneath the sun and slowly dehydrated so weak they couldn’t maintain
their own sanity.
On the fifth day, a Spanish ship located the adrift raft with the three surviving sailors
clinging to life.
Lieutenant Cox was in terrible shape and required intensive care and treatment.
He eventually recovered as best he could and would describe the events portrayed above
to many scientists and historians.
Though the events of this account have been disputed by scholars and witnesses alike,
the survivors of the sinking of The Brittania experienced extreme hardship and demonstrated
the resilience and fortitude of the strongest of hearts.
Some critics of Lieutenant Cox’s version of the events claim they are impossible while
some are sympathetic to them.
Do you think Lieutenant Cox was attacked by a giant squid?
Do you think it's possible that he imagined the squid attack due to sun stroke?
Could he have been so affected by the toxins of the ManOWar that he had a mental breakdown?
Post your thoughts in the comments and let's discuss it together.
Special thanks to Jonathan Dyer for granting me permission to use his article to help create
this video and thanks to The Journal of War in History for permitting the use of this
information as well.
Please visit the links below for further research and confirmation of these events.
Thank you for watching Scary Animal Attacks!
We value you as a member of our human community so please be careful out there, because you
don’t want to end up on an episode of Scary Animal Attacks