Atlantis with…America on the right and Africa on the left? Did a polar bear make this?
As long as we’ve known about it, we humans have told tall tales about the ocean. It’s just so incomprehensibly big that it throws our little brains for a loop, and we’ve got to come up with legends to fill it.
Some folks thought you could sail right off the edge of the world (though not as many as you think–even the ancient Greeks knew the earth was round). They invented Atlantis, a technologically-advanced ancient society that sank beneath the waves. They imagined ghost ships and sea monsters that (mostly) never existed.
The craziest thing, though, is the number of briny legends that turned out to be totally, verifiably true.
Did you see that flash? It was green!
For millenia, everybody’s had a crazy Uncle George who swore he saw a spot of green flash on the horizon as the sun was rising or setting in the waves. The problem? The flash was, well, a flash. It didn’t last long. So nobody believed their poor Uncle Georges.
The green flash phenomena became more widely known in the late 1800s when novelists like Jules Verne began using them as plot points in their novels. But there still wasn’t proof. That is, until someone managed to get a photo of the thing. It was real.
Apparently, the earth’s atmosphere under certain conditions (like the odd angle of light from the very start or end of a sunrise or sunset) can separate sunlight into individual colors, albeit briefly. Who knew?
Sailors did. That’s who.
See? Told you it existed.
That wave came outta nowhere, man
Sailing has always been a risky profession, so it’s no surprise that sea dogs came up with many a wild rumor of what happens out on the ocean. One of the most persistent stories was of giant waves that appeared without any warning and wrecked ships and coastal facilities. Storms generate lots of waves, and earthquakes have some level of predictability too, but these “rogue waves” were supposed to happen in the middle of the ocean in otherwise calm seas. That didn’t make sense to anybody.
Rogue wave sightings were common enough that eventually scientists admitted that they probably did exist, they just didn’t know why. That’s a hard thing to admit for any scientist.
They finally got real hard proof recorded on fancy scientific instruments in the late 20th century, and more recently, some Clever Gus came up with a mathematical explanation for these random waves. I’d explain it to you, but my knowledge of chaos theory comes solely from Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park. Let’s just say waves in the ocean are very chaotic, and sometimes they combine together to make bigger waves, and if you’re really unlucky they make a superwave out of nowhere. There you go.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa. I’m just impressed he had time to draw this wave before it destroyed his boat.
There Be Sea Monsters
The other thing sailors told tall tales about were sea monsters. Dragons a mile long. Fish so big they could swallow a ship. Squid with eyes as big as a man. That last one turned out to be real, if the man in question was about a foot tall.
The ancient Greeks and medieval Vikings both described something like a giant squid. Of course, their version was as big as a (small-ish) island and could swallow ships whole. The real deal wasn’t known well until the 19th century when fishing ships started to find dead squid of unusual size in their nets.
Nowadays, we’ve gotten photos and even videos of these sea monsters in the wild, and while they couldn’t eat anything bigger than a rowboat, they sure could scare the bejeezus out of any sailor who saw them.
I like to imagine the squid’s red because he’s embarrassed.
Let’s bring this voyage back to land
Other than scratching that weird and wonderful knowledge itch we all have, why should you care about the formerly unsolved mysteries of the sea?
The thing about the green flash, rogue waves, and colossal squid is, somebody actually saw them at some point. They told their buddy about it. They told the authorities. But nobody believed them. “Really, Gary, you saw a squid as big as your boat?”
Why would they? Nobody else saw it. And those three claims were, frankly, rather unbelievable.
When you have your big business idea (or just your next idea) you might be the only one who can see it. Your friends and family might have doubts. Your business partners could shoot it down. Potential investors might pass on it. But you could still be right.
Every one of these maritime mysteries was eventually confirmed by an expert who knew what they were looking for and had extraordinary patience. You need someone who knows a good idea from a bad one, and knows how to help you develop the vision, the team, and the message needed to deliver your idea to a waiting world.
When you’re ready to talk ideas, reach out for a chat. We’d love to hear what you’re thinking and see how we can help make your dreams reality.