For my ongoing study on the cultural history of human-cetacean relations, to be published in book form, I envision an chapter called "'Can whales do that?' Fact and fiction in popular whale lore". Recently I came across an old report of a baleen whale, perhaps a launch-feeding humpback, accidentally "swallowing" a boat. It is said to have occurred off Ireland on 28 November 1829 and is reported in the Massachusetts Yeoman and Worcester Saturday Journal and Advertiser of 6 February 1830, page 4, and reads thus: "A Boat's Crew Swallowed by a Whale. - A correspondent of the Dublin Morning Register, under date of Benn Green, Danally, Nov. 30, says - "I have to report a most awful and unparalleled event, which took place in Inver Bay on Saturday last. ((Which would make it the 28 November 1829; KB)) Five men, in a yawl, were in pursuit of a shoal of sprats, for bait, with hand loops, when a whale following the shoal, with open jaws came in contact with the yawl (broadside to.) Feeling the yawl, the monster closed its jaws, and crushed it in pieces, with the exception of the two ends, in one of which was a young lad, in the act of putting out his loop. He was the only one out of five that escaped. One man was found crushed, and fastened to a piece of the floating wreck. A bunch of hair, from the gills of the whale ((bristles of baleen; KB)) fastened in a shiver of the wreck, confirms that the boat was destroyed in the way described, and in the way which those on shore and those in the boats agree in attesting."" Well, is such an accident imaginable? I recall someone (Judy Whitehead?) at a conference many years ago telling how a breaching humpback once landed on her boat. But I'm wondering if anyone can confirm - or give reasons why to dispute - accidents with baleen whales of the type described in the old news article. Thanks and kindest regards Klaus Barthelmess Cologne, Germany