Devil Whale (English) — Creature that Capable of Swallowing Ships

The Devil Whale is a legendary demonic whale-like sea monster (or a sea turtle in some legends). According to myths, this whale is of enormous size and could swallow entire ships. It also resembles an island when it’s sleeping, and unsuspecting sailors put ashore on its back. When the sailors start a fire, the Devil Whale awakes and attacks the ship, dragging it to the bottom of the sea. Because of this Christianity began associating the whale with the Devil. This story is found in Sinbad the Sailor.

The incident of the whale island on Sindbad’s First Voyage, from Baghdad and Basra, may be compared with whales described by “Pliny (23 AD–79 AD) and Solinus, covering four jugera, and the pristis sea-monster of the same authorities, 200 cubits long; Al Kazwini tells a similar tale of a colossal tortoise. Such Eastern stories are probably the original of the whale-island in the Irish travel-romance of St Brandan”. Early explorer Saint Brendan the Navigator (c. AD 484 — c. 577), in his travels, reportedly landed on the back of a gigantic whale on Easter Sunday, mistaking it for an island. Soon as his monks started a fire to cook their meal, the “island” began to swim away and the sailors quickly scrambled back to their boats.

The Devil Whale name was used to describe the California gray whale by Japanese whalers. In 1908, a Japanese whaler related stories about hunting gray whales, which he referred to as “Kukekua Kugira” (Devil Whale) due to the difficulty and danger in hunting it.