Tom Piccott and the giant squid

In October 1873 a boy named Tom Piccott hacked at the tentacles of a giant squid off Portugal Cove, Newfoundland. Sources disagree on the day.

Sources disagree about the day of this encounter. One account dates it to 26 October 1873, another to the twenty-fifth of October, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography says only October 1873. The family name is also spelled Piccot, Piccott and Picot.

In the account that uses 26 October, Theophilus Piccot and Daniel Squires, fishermen, went out after herring near Portugal Cove in Newfoundland, in a 20-foot dory, taking Piccot's son Tom, who was 12. A giant squid attacked the boat. Tom took up a small axe lying in the boat's bottom and chopped the nearest tentacle clean off, a limb one telling puts at thirty-five feet. Two quick blows then cut the second arm gripping the boat. The animal fell back into the sea, giving off ink as it went.

The local clergyman urged Tom to give the severed tentacle to Moses Harvey, a man known to be crazy about strange beasts and fishes. That tentacle, plus a whole squid taken at Logy Bay a month afterwards, allowed Harvey to give British and American zoologists proof that such huge cephalopods exist. The accounts differ on details.