These days the press is happy to carry reports of lake monsters, such as Nessie and Ogopogo. However, for more than a century prior to the Second World War, sea serpents were in vogue - accounts by sea captains or viewers on land of elongated creatures, with undulating humps, and heads raised up like periscopes on long necks. Not only that, but the reports would be printed and reprinted all over the world. Thus it was that the author, scanning old...