The Feejee Mermaid
The word “Mermaid” often brings to mind the image of a beautiful young humanesque sea creature sun bathing on a rock in the midst of the ocean. Sailors on long voyages have claimed to see beings with the head and torso of a human and the tail of fish, and those claims have stuck with the general public for centuries. Stories involving the mysteries of these creatures have not been few and far between, in fact they’ve rather become fascinations for many people.
Mermaids are usually thought of as being female (probably because their first “discoverers” were male) having quite long and beautiful hair and a long. She might sing sailors to their death or swim about with her fish friends, dreaming of legs and a life on land. In 1482, a mermaid was brought to light that had little to nothing in common with the famous females we dream inhabit our seas.
The Feejee Mermaid discovered by Moses Kimball and leased by P.T. Barnum was far from the fair beings that dwell in myths concerning the ocean. The Feejee Mermaid, an exotic beast with the torso of a monkey and the tail of a fish, amazed the world upon its first debut in 1482. Apparently caught around Fiji by Dr. J. Griffin, the beast was a shock to all who laid eyes upon it. It is fair to say that this particular version of a mermaid was a little more on the grotesque side. However, rather than portraying the mermaid for what it was (a dried up monkey fish) pamphlets showed a somewhat seductive maiden of the sea. A newsprint of a bare breasted sum bathing sea maiden was given to the newspapers in order to perpetrate the story. Newspapers and articles that hailed it as, “The most wonderful curiosity in the world,” had everyone wanting to know the truth about the creature.
Though many writings on the subject Barnum is accused of writing himself, the discovery of the Mermaid sparked an interest that soon became quite the flame. The crowds flocked to see the newest wonder Barnum had to offer. For a rather low price, every man woman and child could witness the enigma that had everyone talking, turning the interest into frenzy.
Everyone seemed to have his or her theories on just what it all meant, and as the saying goes: all publicity is good publicity. Everyone from scientists to priests was concerned in what this discovery meant for the world. Was it an undiscovered species or possibly blasphemy?
To Barnum it didn’t matter what they thought as long as it kept people lining up to see his attractions. And while is no doubt that the Feejee Mermaid made quite the splash into society, her glory was short lived. After a few years of moving back and forth from the Museums of Barnum and Kimball she was lost. There have been many remakes of Barnum’s amazing attraction, but none of them were anywhere near as successful as the original half-orangutan half-salmon that stole the show in 1842.
- Barbara Ann Lewis