©Colossal Octopus, Pierre Denys de Montfort, 1810
The Kraken is a legendary sea monster of colossal size that is said to dwell off the coasts of Northern Europe. The English word kraken comes most probably from the Norwegian and Swedish word Krake and designates an unhealthy animal or something twisted. In modern German, Krake means octopus. Sightings of giant squids in the 17th and 18th centuries may have created a legend which gradually declined among sailors and fishermen due to the scientific sea exploration missions conducted in the 19th century. The Kraken ended up losing all its super-natural characteristics and turned into a mere “very large” cephalopod. Some English terms like crook and crank have probably common roots with this vicious and huge creature renown for causing grief and misfortune at sea.
The title of this post is a famous phrase taken from Hollywood’s hilarious by non-sense “Clash of the titans”. The Kraken (Cetus in the original Greek mythology) is released by Zeus and comes from the depths of Poseidon’s domains to ravage Aethiopia as divine punishment. Its gigantic proportions are synonym of destruction. Against it, Cepheus and Cassiopeia, kings of Aethiopia, have nothing to oppose but the overwhelming beauty of their daughter Andromeda doomed to perish in the gigantic jaws of the Kraken. Who knows, if the slenderness and beautiful fragility of the ridiculously chained and provocatively lightly dressed Andromeda would have soothe the beast. We will never know. Should Perseus have failed to rescue the daughter of the Aethiopian king on his wing-horse Pegasus, historians may be telling a different story today…
Kraken is also the code name we have chosen for the first unit of our Slocum Wing Boats (BASn1). Why? Because the Kraken is an iconic image of an unparalleled creature of immense power, a creature that will look like something nobody has ever seen, big and powerful, perfectly adapted to the sea, silent and fast, and in his own certain way, scary too.
We have schedule October 2018 to release the Kraken…