Sea-lion

Also Known As: also blazoned morse; French lion poisson
Region/Culture: Western Europe
Mythos: European Mythology, Medieval Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: A composite sea-monster of European armory that carries the lion’s courage and authority onto the water.
Role in Mythos: It exists as a heraldic charge rather than a character in any tale, standing on shields and crests as an emblem of bold deeds done at sea.
Relation to Humans: No story tells of a sea-lion meeting anyone, because it belongs to families, cities and offices rather than to sailors. Humans encounter it as a claim about themselves, painted on a shield or carved above a gate.

Painted into Siebmacher’s armorial in 1605, on the shield of the Imhof family of Nuremberg, a lion rears with its forepaws raised and simply stops below the ribs, where a coiled, scaled fish tail takes over. It is not drowning. It is not being devoured. It stands as though the water were a floor and it had every right to be standing on it.

That confidence is the whole of the creature. Heraldry built an entire bestiary by cutting animals in half and marrying the front of one to the back of another, and the results are stranger than anything a bestiary compiler ever claimed to have seen off the coast of Norway. The sea-lion is the tidiest of them. Forequarters of a lion, hindquarters of a fish, and not one word in the blazon to suggest that the join should trouble anybody.

The details drift from hand to hand and country to country. Some painters give it a lion’s clawed forepaws; others web the toes, a habit more common in English emblazons. Some run a webbed fin down its back, which is decoration rather than requirement. Its default posture is erect, rearing on the tail, though it can be shown sejant, swimming flat along the field, or rising out of a line of painted waves. German armory in particular likes to fling the tail up and curl it back over the head. Left to its natural colouring the lion half is tawny brown and the fish half green, a pairing that looks far less ridiculous in gouache on gesso than it sounds in description. It is also blazoned, now and then, as a morse, a name reached for mainly when the beast is punning on the surname of the family that bears it.

Its oldest appearance is not a grant but an invention. Medieval heralds had a fondness for assigning coats of arms to famous men who had lived and died long before anyone bore arms at all, and around 1282 a roll hands a sea-lion to “King Palaeologus,” a Byzantine emperor who never blazoned a thing in his life. Real armory arrives later and more quietly. The Imhof shield of 1605 is the first firm citation of a sea-lion actually borne by a living family, though by then the beast was already loose in the pattern books, and Jérôme de Bara had drawn one bowed double in Le Blason des Armoiries in 1581. Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, cataloguing the monsters three centuries later, refused to give it a chapter of its own and filed it with the lions, where he thought it belonged. He noted that it is occasionally found winged, which is a great deal of animal for one shield.

Most of them spend their working lives holding something up. The Earl of Howth’s shield is supported on one side by a silver sea-lion and on the other by a mermaid, with a third sea-lion for the crest above, and the three of them have stood there through generations of carved stone, carriage panels and engraved plate without once moving. A few get to do something. The crest of Duckworth shows a tower with its battlements partly demolished and flame issuing from the top, and on the sinister side a blue sea-lion erect, pressing against the stone. Whatever it is pushing at, it has been pushing at it for a very long time.

What the beast is for is stated plainly enough by the heralds who used it. John Vinycomb, writing in 1909, called it an emblem of bold actions achieved on the ocean in the country’s service, which is heraldry’s way of saying that the lion’s courage did not stop at the tideline. That claim travelled further than any European family. On 20 March 1596 a royal decree of Philip II ennobled the city of Manila and granted it arms: a gold castle above, and below, on a blue field, half a lion and half a dolphin in silver, with red claws and a red tongue, a sword held in its paw. Manila’s beast has no webbed feet, and its manicured red claws make it instantly distinguishable from every other sea-lion in Europe. It survived the empire that granted it. The same half-lion still swims on the seal of the Philippine presidency.

The word itself moved in the opposite direction from the animal. In English around 1600 a sea-lion was a kind of lobster. The fabulous heraldic beast takes the name in the 1660s, and only from the 1690s does it attach to the large eared seals barking on Pacific rocks, which is to say that the real animal was named after the imaginary one.

Its powers are entirely the powers of a claim. It grants command of the water to whoever is entitled to display it, and entitlement is the operative word: a sea-lion does nothing for anyone who has not been granted, or has not inherited, the right to bear one. Heraldry never says how big it is, because a charge is sized to fit the shield and not to fit the ocean.

And it has no story. There is no myth in which a sea-lion is born, hunts, is defeated or dies, no cult, no sailor’s warning, no coastline where fishermen once feared it. Step outside the field of a shield and the animal evaporates. It is also perpetually mistaken for its neighbours: for the merlion of Singapore, for the sea-dog and the sea-wolf and the sea-horse that share its construction, and, most often now, for a large noisy pinniped that stole its name three centuries after it stole nothing at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a sea-lion in heraldry?

A sea-lion is a heraldic monster with the forequarters of a lion joined to the scaled tail of a fish. Some depictions give it webbed forepaws instead of a lion’s claws, and some add a webbed fin along the back. Its default posture is erect, rearing on its tail, and its natural colouring is tawny brown above and green below.

Where does the heraldic sea-lion come from?

The earliest known example is an attributed coat of arms, invented by heralds around 1282 for “King Palaeologus,” a Byzantine emperor who never actually bore arms. In genuine armory it appears in the arms of the Imhof family of Nuremberg in 1605, recorded in Siebmacher’s armorial, and Jérôme de Bara had already drawn one in Le Blason des Armoiries in 1581.

What does a sea-lion symbolise on a coat of arms?

The heraldic writer John Vinycomb described it in 1909 as an emblem of bold actions achieved on the ocean in a country’s service. It carries the lion’s traditional associations of courage and authority into a maritime setting, which is why it is common among naval families, port cities and coastal offices.

Is the sea-lion on Manila’s coat of arms the same creature?

Yes. A royal decree of Philip II dated 20 March 1596 granted Manila arms bearing a silver half-lion and half-dolphin on a blue field, holding a sword, with red claws and tongue. Unlike most European sea-lions it has no webbed feet, and the same figure still appears on the seal of the president of the Philippines.

Is the heraldic sea-lion related to the real sea lion?

Only by name, and the borrowing runs backwards from what most people assume. In English around 1600 “sea-lion” meant a kind of lobster, it became the name of the heraldic monster in the 1660s, and only from the 1690s was it applied to the large eared seals. The animal was named after the imaginary beast.