Mariah Fredericks on the Great Sea Monster Hoax of Nantucket

In the summer 1937, a fisherman spotted a giant sea monster off the coast of Nantucket. So far as we know, he was entirely sober. Returning to shore, Bill Manville did what any enterprising fellow would do in an economic  depression: he went to the newspapers.

“Probably you won’t believe me,” Manville told the skeptical reporters, “and folks will think I’m nutty. But it is a fact, there is some big monster out there. I tell you that strange creature is hovering around this island and he’ll show up again, mark my word!”

The local newspapers may have thought Manville was indeed nutty. But his prediction proved correct. Days later, another fisherman, Gilbert Manter, reported seeing the monster. He judged it to be about “a hundred and twenty feet long,” and described as “grayish green with sort of a horned head. It looked like a combination snake and whale, with a head much bigger than the neck.”

Soon after that, Manter discovered webbed footprints, measuring sixty-six inches long and forty-five inches wide on Madaket Beach. Photos of the footprints were sent to the New York Zoological Society. Dr. W. Reid Blair, the society’s director, dismissed them, saying they could not have been made by either marine or land mammal.

There, he was wrong. A land mammal had made the prints, a creature by the name of Tony Sarg, legendary puppeteer and designer of the fabulous balloons at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

A part-time resident of Nantucket, Sarg had conspired with his daughter, Mary, as well as the two fishermen and the local papers, to pull off a hoax that would draw attention to the island and its charms. What better way to get the country’s attention than by claiming a big green sea monster had decided to vacation in Nantucket? To paraphrase Scooby Doo, Sarg might have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for some meddling locals, who did not want Nantucket “exploited by any sort of cheap publicity” and so exposed the hoax to the national press.

Not to be deterred, in late August, Sarg and his co-conspirators rescued the monster from its platform at sea and, after some repairs and fresh injections of helium, displayed him on the beach as if he had just washed ashore. Having had its beach holiday, the monster returned to the city. In that year’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, he appeared as Morton the Nantucket Sea Monster. Morton had apparently gotten a sunburn. His green scales were painted red for the parade, giving him a slightly Satanic appearance.

1937 was not Morton’s first trip down Central Park West. He had made his debut in the parade the year before. But he was playing a different part: the dragon of Sir Guy the Crusader. He took half an hour to inflate and fifty handlers to keep him in line.

At this time, the parade—including the massive balloons—had to pass under the 9th Avenue elevated train at Lincoln Square. Some feared Morton was so large, he wouldn’t make it without a puncture. But he passed through safely. (According to the New York Times, the balloon of Father Diedrich Knickerbocker was not so fortunate. His nose caught on the metal, deflating “his smiling face and cocked hat.” Thankfully, he was quickly repaired by the emergency team and rejoined the parade.)

1937 marked Morton’s last appearance in the Macy’s parade. The year before, t must have been a bittersweet time for the company. Jesse Straus, the eldest son of Isidor and Ida Straus, who ran the business for many years with his brothers Herbert and Percy, died of pneumonia in October 1936. Morton’s creator, Tony Sarg, would die of a ruptured appendix in 1942 at the age of fifty-nine. The Times remembered him, somewhat uncharitably, as the designer of “the grotesque caricature balloons in the annual Thanksgiving Day parade.”

Morton himself had an honorable end. After appearing in parades in other cities, he valiantly contributed his rubber to the United States military as it entered World War II. (The Macy’s parade was suspended from 1942 to 1944. A press release from “the Macy’s balloons” proclaimed “Macy balloons have always stood for peace and plenty of fun for all. We were a weaving and bobbing symbol of democracy at place. Fear never marched in our ranks. There wasn’t a goosestep or gun in the whole shebang.” Now, the balloons declared, they were giving their rubber and helium to “deflate Hitler and his chums.”

But Morton has not been forgotten. He made an appearance in the 2016 Ghostbusters, in a sequence featuring the ghosts of early Macy’s balloons. In 2024, the Nantucket Historical Association hosted a “Summer of Sarg,” for which they created a new incarnation of Morton. Morton was “spotted” all over the island, bringing as his creator intended, surprise and delight to all.

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