The history of real mermaids and the folklore behind them
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In the early hours of a mist-shrouded June morning in 1608, two sailors aboard Henry Hudson’s ship peered over the side and thought they saw something uncanny in the Greenland surf. They described a woman-like figure with dark hair and very pale skin. One recorded that “from the navill upward, her back and breasts were like a woman’s” and that her tail “was like the tayle of a porposse, and speckled like a macrell”[1]. These vivid details come straight from Hudson’s own log. At the time, to Hudson’s weary crew this was no joke or sailor’s yarn—they dutifully recorded it as if charting an unknown island. Viewed in hindsight, we know it was almost certainly a seal or whale fin peeking through the waves, but to those 17th-century eyes it was undeniably a mermaid.
Section Index
Such reports were far from unique in the Age of Sail. Captains around the world claimed mermaid encounters. Christopher Columbus, in 1493, wrote that he saw three “sirens” rise from the sea off Hispaniola, although he dryly noted they were “not half as beautiful as they are painted”[2]. (Modern scientists conclude Columbus almost certainly saw manatees[2][3].) In 1610, English navigator Richard Whitbourne told of a “strange creature” in Newfoundland—“she had long hair hanging about her shoulders, a very pretty face, and body exactly like that of a woman”—which tried to climb aboard his vessel[4]. Whitbourne struck it with a boat-hook, utterly convinced it was a mermaid (he even later carved a wooden likeness).
News of such wonders traveled back home. Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette in 1736 printed a Bermudan account of a “sea monster” with an upper body “in the shape … of a boy of 12 years” and a fish-like tail[5]. In 1769 a British captain off the coast of Brittany logged a “sea monster, like a man” swimming alongside his ship—only to notice that, for a moment, it aligned with the carved female figurehead on the bow, as if the two had merged[5]. Over decades of voyages, sightings of half-human shapes under mysterious lights or choppy waves became an oddly routine part of naval journals. Each captain’s report blurred observation with hope and legend.
Of course, by the 18th century many mermaid stories were met with skepticism. The most famous example is the Jamestown myth: it was long said that Captain John Smith encountered a green-haired mermaid in 1614, but historians have shown that this tale first appeared in an 1849 romanticized journal, not in Smith’s own accounts[6][7]. Learned men began annotating nautical gazetteers with doubt. An 1815 British dictionary tersely remarked that “we have no authenticated instance of the existence of a mermaid”. Still, the stories had been told and published; when we look back we can sketch out a timeline of the most memorable “mermaid events” from 1600 to 1800:
- 1608: Hudson’s Arctic Voyage—Two crewmen report seeing a “mermaid” near the ice, with a woman’s torso and a porpoise-like tail[1].
- 1610: Newfoundland Harbor—Capt. Whitbourne’s log describes a “beautiful” sea-maiden with hair “like seaweed” attempting to board[4].
- 1614: Jamestown—A tale of John Smith’s mermaid circulates later, but it has no 17th-c. source[6][7].
- 1736: Bermuda Sea Monster—Franklin’s newspaper reprints a sighting: “upper part like a boy of 12, lower part like a fish”[5].
- 1769: English Frigate off France—British sailors report a creature “like a man” near their bow, briefly resembling the ship’s female figurehead[5].
- 1749: Linnaean Expedition—Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus famously urges men to capture a mermaid, calling it “one of the biggest discoveries”[8]. (He and a student later published an academic treatise on a hypothetical “Siren” anatomy[9].)
- 1837: The Little Mermaid (Andersen)—Hans Christian Andersen publishes his fairy-tale of a soul-seeking mermaid, cementing the creature as a Romantic archetype[10].
- 1842: Barnum’s Fiji Mermaid—P.T. Barnum displays a famous hoax: an orangutan’s torso sewn to a fish tail, marketed as a genuine mermaid[11].
These snapshots reveal how easily reality and myth coexisted at sea. Crewmen saw dark shapes and believed in monsters; writers later gave those monsters vivid names. Admiralty charts might map the coasts, but on long voyages the unwary sailor’s gaze often turned to the depths. Note how even Linnaeus—pillar of scientific taxonomy—once took mermaids seriously enough to commission a hunt[8], only to shrug decades later when none were found. By the mid-1800s, however, the weight of global exploration began to drown out the legend.
Folklore and Fakes
Mermaids were not just a European or nautical obsession—they figure in folklore around the globe, often with local twists. Ancient myths had set the template: Babylon’s Oannes, Greece’s Sirens, India’s Matsya avatars and river spirits, all suggested feminine aquatic beings. By medieval times the mermaid image was widespread in art and literature. In Europe she became a cautionary figure (standing for lust or danger), a theme carved into church pulpits. Likewise, sailors’ fairs and collectors’ cabinets brimmed with “evidence” of her existence—albeit fabricated.
One famous example of fakery is the Jenny Haniver. From the 1500s onward, European sailors would take dried rays or skates, cut and pin them to resemble half-beast mermaids, and sell them in ports as real mermaids. These grotesque souvenirs became a standard prop. Switzerland’s great naturalist Conrad Gesner, in 1558, angrily noted that such “mermaids” were no more than “the bones of skates”[12]—yet the hoax endured. Even as late as the 1800s, natural history museums sometimes displayed Jenny Hanivers with only a sardonic footnote. Accompanying them might be Narwhal tusks (billed as “mermaid fingers”) or so-called mermaid stones (actually whale vomit), all traded on the creature’s mystique.
Other cultures had analogous creations. In East Asia, waters held mysterious beings too. Classic Chinese texts like the Shan Hai Jing mention fish-bodied humans, and the Ming Sou Shen Ji specifically notes mermaid-like women whose “tears become pearls”[13]—an idea that shows up in poetry. Qing-dynasty tales like Pu Songling’s Strange Stories tell of kind-hearted mermaids who fall in love with men (e.g. the story of Bai Qiulian)[14]. These accounts usually treat mermaids as moral or magical beings rather than scientific reality. In Japan, villagers spoke of the ningyo, a fish-woman whose flesh might grant immortality—a belief so enduring that Edo-era “mermaid bones” (really shark or ray teeth) were sold as longevity elixirs[15].
Colonial stories also mixed in local myth. In Brazil and Amazonia, the Tupi-Guarani figure of the Iara (“Lady of the Waters”) is a mermaid-like nymph. Early records describe her as a dark-skinned beauty of native lore, but European colonists later retold the story with a white or blonde mermaid figure[16]—evidence of the legend adapting to new worldviews. In Africa, river and sea spirits (like the West African Mami Wata) often resemble fish-women; European traders and anthropologists lumped them under the “mermaid” label even when they took snake-forms or had snake-hair. And among Arctic peoples, though there are no literal mermaids, there is Sedna: a goddess of the sea often depicted with a fish’s tail, ruling over marine animals.
In short, the mermaid is global, but always local. She can be deadly or devotional, sexy or sober, depending on who is telling the story. What few cultures have is a half-fish scientist; most had imaginative explanations for the unknown depths. Mariners, missionaries and merchants exported the idea to every corner of the world, and in each place it blended with preexisting beliefs—from religious syncretism to cautionary legend.
Science and Skepticism
By the late 18th century, naturalists and navigators began to explain the mermaid away. Chart-makers, biologists and sailors had by then seen enough seals, whales and dugongs to know their shapes. They noted that a tired seal, propped up on its foreflippers, could look like a reclining nude woman from a distance. Manatees and dugongs surface regularly; their gentle faces and forelimbs could deceive untrained eyes. As one 19th-century author dryly observed, “Every famous sea-maid in the New World has been shown to be an old panther or porpoise”[3].
Textbooks and encyclopedias reflected this shift. By 1840, standard marine biology lectures taught officers to file mermaid sightings under “errors of observation.” In 1889, zoologist Philip Gosse noted that every mermaid report in Western waters coincided exactly with known pinnipeds or sirenians[17]. The notion became so implausible that geographers included mermaids among “monsters” guaranteed not to be found. The scientific community moved mermaids from the realm of natural history to the realm of folklore and cautionary tale.
That said, educated people still found mermaids a useful touchstone. Carl Linnaeus himself famously waxed fanciful about them. In 1749 he wrote to the Swedish Academy urging them to search for a mermaid—stating that catching one would be “one of the biggest discoveries”[8]. In 1766 he helped publish a short academic thesis on “Siren lacertina,” a theoretical fish-woman, to analyze how such a creature might anatomically bridge the gap between man and fish[9]. Sir Robert Sibbald of Scotland, naturalist and physician, told Sir Hans Sloane (of Royal Society fame) that he was collecting “accounts and figures” of mermaids seen in his own waters[18]. In other words, to 18th-century intellectuals mermaids were not dismissed out of hand but studied as a frontier of natural philosophy—even if ultimately found to be frontier mythology.
By the turn of the 20th century, however, the verdict was clear: mermaids belonged in storybooks, not science. All naval surveys had charted the coasts, and zoologists had categorized ocean life. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now bluntly states that “no evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found”[19]. The British Admiralty quietly removed mermaids from new editions of sailing directions, adding footnotes that suggested seals or shipwreck tales were more likely. In field manuals, “mermaid” became a warning: sail on, and don’t waste time chasing shadows in the foam.
Hoaxes and Hype
The death of scientific credulity did little to kill the mermaid’s popularity in popular culture. In fact, as museums catalogued the seas, carnivals and showmen adopted mermaids with gusto. The mid-19th century was the mermaid’s golden age of hype. Besides Barnum’s famed Fiji Mermaid (1842)[11], countless smaller freak shows produced their own. Advertisements in American papers promised “Live Mermaid Exhibit—Only in Philadelphia!” where a woman in a green tail would appear in a tank. In London, penny shows paraded painted mermaid figures, and even children’s toys included “mermaid dolls” with plastic tails.
Curiosity collections took note too. A few museums created special cases of “Mythical Sea Creatures.” The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, for example, once displayed an “alleged mermaid skeleton” (really a carved fish) alongside genuine whale vertebrae, explicitly to show how error-prone the body-snatchers of mermaids could be. Newspapers wrote up museum exhibits with tongue in cheek: “Largest Merfolk Ever!” only to admit it was made of wax. By the 1870s, even the concert halls joined in—two popular operettas of the era had scenes of seductive sirens luring sailors, and composer Offenbach cheekily included a mermaid aria in his 1878 Voyage to the Moon.
Popular culture both ridiculed and revered mermaids. Punch magazine in 1856 ran a cartoon of a society lady wearing a mermaid’s tail, commenting on female fashion trends. Children’s books retold the Andersen fairy tale un-abridged, often printing the tragic ending where the mermaid dissolves in foam—a grim moral for Victorian youth. Yet penny dreadfuls and broadsheets of the same era sometimes spun completely fictional mermaid adventures in far-off tropical seas, selling excitement and exoticism. Local fairs even crowned “Mermaid of the Lake” pageant queens, showing how deeply the imagery had seeped into everyday life.
In Art and Story
By the late 19th century, mermaids had truly become artistic icons. Writers and painters rarely bothered asking “are mermaids real?”—they assumed the answer but used the figure symbolically. Andersen’s The Little Mermaid (1837) remains the definitive literary mermaid of that time[10]: it has been translated into dozens of languages, and it inspired endless adaptations. French Symbolists saw the mermaid as beauty in a cruel world; British Pre-Raphaelites, like Waterhouse and Burne-Jones, painted her as a tragic dream. The mermaid became an emblem of unattainable desire, blending themes of love, betrayal and transformation.
Sculptors and visual artists incorporated mermaids too. The 1890s saw a vogue of mermaid statues and illustrations in England and America. Copenhagen, proud of Andersen’s tale, installed a bronze mermaid statue (1909) on a rock by the harbor, making her a tourist landmark (even though this is just outside our 1800s window, it shows the longevity of the myth). Operas like Delibes’s Sylvia (1876) featured mermaid choruses, and composers from Wagner (in flutes and oboe voices) to Offenbach wove their song. Mermaids even appeared in science fiction: Jules Verne wrote of diving bells and mermaid sightings in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), treating them as a mystery to be explained (though Verne himself admitted it was all speculation).
Even fashion caught the wave. Late Victorian dresses, with their long trains, were jokingly compared to mermaid tails. Ladies’ journals ran stories about “mermaid’s tears” glass jewelry (supposedly made from sea shells). Of course, none of this proved mermaids existed, but it made them feel real in a cultural sense: a mermaid-themed painting on the wall or a song in the opera house kept the legend swimming in public consciousness.
Modern Mermaid Mystique
By the 20th century, the notion of real mermaids in the oceans had faded completely from serious thought, but the myth only deepened in popular culture. Hollywood’s early films (like The Mermaid in 1910) and later Disney cartoons turned mermaids into familiar storybook figures. The phrase “mermaid” today triggers adventure or romance, not newspaper fact-checking. Attitudes shifted: it became socially acceptable to say “I love mermaids” without inviting mockery, precisely because mermaids were now known to be fantasy.
Officially, science says “no mermaids ever.” NOAA’s modern statement—“no evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found”[19]—ends the question for biologists. But fun fact: the mermaid persists as powerful branding and wish-fulfillment. The coffee giant Starbucks wouldn’t put a twin-tailed siren on its logo if the creature were looked on with contempt; she stands for something alluring, not for reality. Children’s toys sell out every year for “mermaid tails” that let swimmers pretend to be Anna of Arendelle’s sister or Disney’s Ariel. Even ocean parks and water shows hire swimmers with fishtails as an underwater performance art.
Real-life “sightings” still pop up in the news. For example, in 2009 a seaside town in Israel was astonished when residents reported seeing a mermaid in the Mediterranean. The municipality offered a 1-million-shekel reward for a photo[20]—and of course none was claimed. (Some pranksters finally fessed up that they’d joked on social media, but the story made international headlines.) Online today, mermaid memes and viral videos (often children or divers with green tails) keep the conversation alive.
Across all these eras, the mermaid has proved to be a mirror more than an animal. She reflects our hopes and fears about the sea, about “the Other,” about love and betrayal. In one age she was a monster of the deep; in another an innocent romantic yearning for a soul; in another a carnival curiosity to be poked fun at. Now she can even be a symbol of environmental awareness (e.g. cartoons of mermaids teaching children about ocean cleanup). What remains constant is human fascination.
In conclusion, the history of real mermaids is not a chronicle of biology but a chronicle of culture. No mermaid corpse has ever been found and no mermaid gene has ever turned up—in that sense, they were never “real” creatures. But they are unquestionably real in our collective storybook. From Hudson’s logbook to Andersen’s fairy tale to a modern aquarium tank show, mermaids have swum through four centuries of human thought. They have taught us to question what we see, to beware of hoaxes and to cherish imagination. In that sense, mermaids are as “real” as the myths and dreams we keep alive.
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