By Gayne C. Young
By 1917 Theodore Roosevelt was running out of animal species to kill.
The former president had successfully hunted Maine, the Dakota Badlands, Colorado, the Grand Canyon, and taken just about one of everything in Africa. So it was with much excitement that he read “My Fight with the Devilfish” in The American Museum Journal. The piece by Russell J. Coles told of his harpooning an 18-feet-2-inch wide manta ray (aka devilfish) that weighed an estimated 1 1/2 tons. It took Coles 10 hours to fight the beast and afterward, he donated it to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Roosevelt was so impressed with the story—and the idea of killing a devilfish himself—that he wrote to Russell. The legendary tobacco-dealer turned “Big Game Hunter of the Sea” replied with an invitation for Roosevelt to accompany Coles on his next trip. Roosevelt said hell yeah and jumped at the opportunity to kill something new.
Roosevelt arrived at Punta Gorda, Florida on March 25, 1917. He was ferried by boat to a floating camp situated just off the eastern side of Captiva Island where he visited with Coles and met the men who were to serve as his crew. Roosevelt wrote of these men in Harpooning Devilfish, “All four were professional fishermen, averaging fifty years of age. They were alert, weather-beaten men who all their lives long had wrought their livelihood by hard and hazardous labor on the sea. They were quiet, hard-working, self-reliant, utterly fearless. They had been trained by Coles until they were as letter-perfect in harpooning devilfish.”
The group rose before dawn the next day to go after manta. The small boat chugged through the mangrove swamps, allowing Roosevelt to make note of the local flora and fauna. He saw herons, egrets, terns, gulls, and pelicans. Of the latter he wrote, “The most noticeable birds were the pelicans. They swam in midstream; they stood in flocks on the sand-bars, and they perched on the dead snags. They showed little fear and often swam by the boat within easy gunshot.”
Captivated by Captiva
Relax, T.R. You already popped a pelican back in Africa. Remember?
The group boated out of the swamps, through Blind Pass, and into the “Mexican Gulf.” It was a beautiful day, the sun was “blinding,” and “the tepid waters teemed with life.” Roosevelt was admiring the fish that swam beneath his boat when one of the crew spotted a devilfish. “It was half a mile off, swimming rather slowly through the water, so near the surface that now and then its glistening black mass appeared for a moment above. The huge batlike wings flapped steadily; occasionally the point of one was thrust into the air.” Coles grabbed a harpoon for himself and one for Roosevelt and the two men prepared to take down the creature. The distance was closed, Roosevelt threw his “iron,” and … missed. Roosevelt attributed this misthrow to the fact that the fish was swimming toward the boat and that he didn’t allow for the speed of the craft.
It’s ok T.R. We all blow a shot now and again.
Roosevelt didn’t have time to fret his miss as the crew quickly called that they spotted “four or five of the great sea brutes on the surface ahead and to one side of us.” The boat sped forward and Roosevelt tried his aim once more. “This time I threw true, the iron going deep into the middle of the great body; and instantly afterward Coles fastened it with another iron. With a tremendous flurry and a great gush of dark blood the devilfish plunged below and ahead.” The beast dragged the boat nearly a mile before the crew was able to turn him toward the shore. They dragged the manta up on the beach, left him in the shade so not to rot, and headed out to hopefully take another specimen.
T.R.’s Monster Devilfish
Another ray was quickly spotted and Roosevelt harpooned him, “in the centre of the body almost in the exact spot that I had struck the first.” This much larger devilfish tore through the waters dragging the boat sideways. Roosevelt put another iron in the massive bat-like creature and it fought for all its might. “We were in a heavy thirty-foot, five-ton launch; yet the devilfish, passing under us and rising, lifted the stern a foot or more upward, and then, sounding, pulled the bow a couple of feet down; and for some little time, it actually hauled the launch backward. Then it came to the surface again and towed us in a long three-quarter circle.” Roosevelt put a third iron in the fish, but it continued to fight. It dragged the boat another two miles before the crew was able to start for shore.
Roosevelt’s first devilfish was a male whose wingspread measured 13 feet 2 inches. The second, larger fish, was a female that measured 16 feet 8 inches from tip to tip. Unfortunately, Roosevelt’s first devilfish had begun rotting in the sun despite being left in the shade. His second carried so many holes that it was too far gone to be saved. Roosevelt mourned the loss of these trophies but later declared that he “did not care to kill any more of the huge, rare creatures. I much regretted that the two which were drawn up on the beach could not have been saved for scientific purposes, as they were unusually perfect specimens, both male and female, and as there is in the museums of the world but one specimen—the one killed by Coles —which is larger than my largest.”
This big sea hunt would prove to be Roosevelt’s last outdoor adventure. Much like the devilfish on the beach, he quickly deteriorated and died in his sleep only a year later on January 16, 1919, at only 60 years of age.
Today, manta rays are protected the world over and men like Roosevelt as rare as the monster devilfish he once harpooned.
