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The Horrifying Fiji Mermaid
Nightmare fuel from history
The 1822 meeting between Captain Samuel Barrett Edes and a group of Japanese fishermen was an unlikely affair. This was decades before Japan opened her doors to the Western world. Captain Samuel Barrett Edes was an American and did not speak Japanese but that did not dissuade him from doing business with the foreign sailors.
When Edes heard about the mermaid that the Japanese supposedly had in their cargo hold he must have thought it was simply another fish tale. A story. A legend spawned from uneventful months at sea.
That was until they presented it to him. The Japanese emerged from their ship carrying an honest-to-god mermaid.
The creature was so striking that Captain Edes purchased it on the spot. He spent $6,000 and took the money from his ship’s expense account to cover the cost. Today, that amount translates to roughly $100,000. No small sum.
But what exactly did Captain Edes buy on that fateful day? The creature would go on to be known as the Fiji Mermaid and it was terrifying.
The appearance
American legend PT Barnum wrote of the creature’s appearance in his journals. Barnum would eventually market the Fiji Mermaid for his own purposes but we’ll get to that in a bit.
