More Piratical pontificating

No, that's not a picture of the newly refurbished Pirates of the Caribbean ride: It's Sea World's Kraken coaster, named after the mythical sea beastie who features in the latest installment of the Pirates franchise.

According to stories this huge, many armed creature could reach as high as the top of a sailing ship's main mast. Krakens would attack a ship, wrap their arms around the hull and capsize it. ... In 1752, when the Bishop of Bergen, Erik Ludvigsen Pontoppidan, wrote his The Natural History of Norway he described the Kraken as a "floating island" one and a half miles across. He also noted: "It seems these are the creatures' arms, and, it is said, if they were to lay hold of the largest man-of-war, they would pull it down to the bottom." Later Kraken stories bring the creature down to a smaller, but still monstrous, size. Kraken of legend is probably what we know today as the giant squid.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson's take is after the jump.

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.