The Veasta, Chesil Beach Sea Monster

This area once has well-established trade links with Spain. Depending upon the pronunciation, Veasta sometime sounded like "vista", that is the Spanish for on summer nights - sighted in all her splendour, bathing off the hidden shores of this mystical coastline.

Veasta is the Chesil Beach monster and, though ignored for well over 500 years, she was sighted again as recently as August 1995, 50 yards off Chesil Beach at Portland - some 12 feet high, half fish, half giant seahorse. On this occasion it was I myself who saw her. Before then I had never heard Veasta, but that experience led me into the research which has borne fruit in this article and in a forthcoming book.

Portland's Jurassic landscape lives in a cycle of submergence and emergence, revealing its pre-historic existence. This Isle traces the evolution of life as quarried stone denudes petrified ammonites and trilobites locked in the fossils of the moment. Mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers once roamed here, their kingdom now greatly reduced in scope by natural convulsion. At the Portland race, tides from the east and west converge, drawing upon the forces of the sun and moon to reflect raw energies to the ocean depths. Unimaginable power is unleashed as fathom upon fathom of dense, green sea collide relentlessly against unyielding tides.

The Isle has always fed the Chesil Bank as its seemingly inexhaustible waste debris falls carelessly into the seas and nourishes the beach by perpetual attrition. These are the seas that organise and rank those cohorts of brightly coloured calcareous, quartz and jasper pebbles on Portland's ancient beach, whose shields of armour dazzle in the sunlight. It is these shores, which defended England's southerly coastline against the ravages of storm and tide, which hold the secret of Veasta.

It would seem that Veasta has visited the shores off Portland over a period spanning five centuries. She was first sighted in 1457, then in 1757, then in 1965 and most recently in August 1995.... As far as known.

The earliest sighting of Veasta was misunderstood because in the 15th Century imagery of the cockerel and the pheasant was used to describe the unknown in terms of the known to a rural audience. It is easy to ridicule this "hallucination" as pre-Age of Enlightenment delusion. Yet it is clear from Holinshed's Chronicles that 15th Century man could distinguish between whales, dolphins and sea cows. However, Holinshed also tells us that a creature was seen in 1457 "in the Isle of Portland" which could not be neatly classified, which defied explanation.

The Age of Enlightenment may be considered to have begun in the year 1700. Veasta was sighted in June 1757 by no less than the Reverend John Hutchins, famous historian of Dorset. Not only was the monster seen but also the corpse was washed ashore at Burton Bradstock - What Happened to it?

In the mid-1740s important figures in the town of Weymouth, including Sir George Bubb Dodington, Portland based Edward Tucker Esq and the former Mayor of Bath, Ralph Allen, formed an alliance. They were aware of the potential to transform the town. They had all recognised that tastes and fashion were changing and leaning towards a return to Roman traditions for good health and long life, which advocated the consumption of seawater (together with a portion of wine for good measure). There was more than one case of occasional visitors, "come to drink up the sea", finding their primeval instincts aroused by that curvaceous bay.

The 1757 sighting came as unwelcome news to the "dealer in salt-water" who had committed vast sums of their personal wealth to the success of the Resort of Weymouth. They feared the genteel visitors' disgust and revulsion at the prospect of a monster creature sharing their bathing area and contaminating local supplies of seawater by its very presence. Although there is clear evidence of the 1757 sighting, the fact that it is not documentation in more detail suggests that a plan was hatched to destroy all documentation relating to the sighting of Veasta and to have all witnesses to the monster's corpse silenced.

However, unknown to the Weymouth men at that time, a communication had reached the Dorset Historian, John Hutchins, who had been afforded the time to research his work thoroughly and had been able to view and document the evidence. This surviving report appeared in the first two editions of his great History and Antiquities of Dorset but was suppressed in the third. It was trivialised and lampooned by Sir Frederick Treves in his Highways and Byways in Dorset. It is by no means the only example of the history of Weymouth and Portland being re-written for the convenience of powerful vested interests.

At that time, then, Veasta was a monster that should be seen but not heard of. Yet there have been two sightings during the last 30 years: not only in 1995 but at Church Ope Cove on Portland in 1965 by two reliable witnesses. This sighting was mocked in cartoons that portrayed the creature as blonde, buxom and wedded to the tail end of a fish. Are there other creatures of the same species as the one washed ashore in 1757, lurking off Portland's shores? Will the plan to illuminate Chesil Beach between the watering places of the Ferrybridge Inn and the Cove Inn this summer make it impossible to ignore Veasta, Portland's own sea monster, any longer?

But if you still feel cynical, uncomfortable or dissatisfied at the prospect of being introduced to an unknown species, a creature, that is half fish and half giant sea-horse, gracing the shores of Portland's Chesil Bank, there is always the cuddly, happy, fairy-tale version of the Chesil Beach Monster.

Isn't The Improbable Often True? August 1995

Veasta, a mutant creature, whose lower torso is like that of a fish and whose upper body is like that of a giant, crested sea horse, was sighted off Chesil Beach at the Portland end.

Strange to tell, a similar creature, some 12 feet tall, had previously been sighted and had been called the Chesil Beach Monster. The reference was, however, lost and not reported.

July 1965

• A similar creature to Veasta was seen at Church Ope Cove on Portland, but conventional disbelief led to the portrayal of Veasta as a blonde, buxom mermaid, wedded to the tail end of a fish.
• Curiously, these sightings have never been documented in the many volumes of Dorsetshire myth or folklore.

June 1757

• A strain of the creature was actually washed ashore on the banks of the Chesil.
• Veasta was examined scientifically by the foremost Dorset Historian and Antiquarian, the Reverend John Hutchins.
• The report, which lay hidden for decades was trivialised and scoffed at.
• The Borough's historical accounts of the Age of Enlightenment have been rewritten, as the Dorset Magazine, Dorset Life, highlighted.

November 1457

"In the Isle of Portland", Veasta was sighted, rising up, with the mass of four or five men and standing on the waves. This was documented in Holinshed's Chronicles, where it is clear that fifteenth-century man could distinguish between sea cows, whales and dolphins.

Here was a creature, which could not be neatly categorised...which defied explanation.