SUN JOURNAL • February 15, 2025
Back in 1902, a fisherman named Charles McVane — who lived on Long Island in Casco Bay — is said to have barely survived a midnight encounter with a huge lobster. After a long day, McVane pulled his dory onto a sandy spit and hunkered down for a night’s sleep. During the night the water rose unexpectedly high and McVane felt a sudden wave that carried both him and his dory off. Knocked unconscious by driftwood, he found himself lying on a different stretch of sand. He felt like a huge vise had clamped across his throat as he struggled for air. He felt “the cold shell of a monster lobster.” Finally, the lobster released its grip. He spent the rest of the night whittling wooden pegs from driftwood to drive into the creature’s claws to render them useless. McVane had a taxidermist mount the 4-foot-long lobster. Was it true? Two years earlier, the Portland Evening Express mentioned that McVane had been entertaining friends with his “famous stories.”