"In 1739… The Scots Magazine carried a report that the crew of the ship Halifax, short on rations in the East Indies, had caught and eaten several mermaids. Upon arriving in London, the sailors described how, when taken, the creatures moaned 'with great sensibility.' The flesh, the men said, tasted like veal."
"Sirens especially were viewed as symbols of lesbianism, their sexuality both alluring and threatening, and like lesbian relationships (at least as the conventional wisdom of the time went), sirens viewed men as either prey to be consumed or inconsequential playthings to be destroyed. That, and their apparent inability to consumate sexual relations with a man made mermaids dangerously perverse in the Victorian mindset."
