Growing up in San
Diego I spent a lot of time in the water and one of the things that used to
frighten me when I was a young man was what surfers called the Man in the Grey
Suit also known as a shark. Sharks have a been a primal fear ever since
man took to the water, and today they are still misunderstood. A lot of the
fear comes from fiction, from popular stories such as Peter Benchley’s Jaws and
Steven Alten’s Meg and their stories being turned into blockbuster movies.
Where does this fear come from? It comes from history.
This is the age of
beachside resorts, World War I is still going on, and polio is an epidemic. The
year was 1916 and a great heat wave gripped the east coast and so people look
to solace in the cool water of the beaches of New Jersey. On July 1st, at a
resort town known as Beach Haven, the first victim was struck. Charles Epting
Vansant, age 28, was swimming alongside his Chesapeake Retriever when people
heard Vansant calling for help. Onlookers on the beach believed that Vasant was
calling to his dog, but instead he was being attacked by a shark. Vansant was
retrieved by lifeguards, but his wounds were most severe, one of his thighs had
been ripped to ribbons, and he bled out on the manager’s desk at the Engleside
Hotel shortly after the attack.
The next major
attack happened on July 6th. A Bell Captain of the Essex and Sussex Hotel,
by the name of Charles Bruder, 27, was swimming about 130 meters from the shore
when he was attacked. Bruder was bitten on the abdomen and both of his legs
were bitten off above the knees. People on the beach heard his anguished screams
and a team of lifeguards paddled out to him in a small canoe, but it was too
late to do anything and Bruder died on the boat.
The next two
victims were at a place called Matawan Creek, not
far from Keyport, New Jersey on July 12th. One of the reasons this is more
tragic is that Matawan Creek is freshwater and is an inlet to Raritan Bay and
shouldn’t be a location for a shark to be found. A
group of young boys were playing in the creek next to an area known as
"Wyckoff Dock". Amongst them
was a boy by the name of Lester Stillwell, 11. The boys saw the dorsal fin of a
shark and made their way to the dock. Stillwell trying to keep up with his friends,
was almost out of the creek as he was pulled underwater. The boys ran for help
and several men came to the rescue of Lester Stillwell. One of these men was
Watson Stanley Fisher, 24, who dove into the creek looking for the boy. After
locating Stillwell’s body, Fisher started making his way back to the shore when
he was also attacked by the predator.
His right thigh was bitten and he died shortly after in the hospital due
to his injuries. Stillwell’s body was finally recovered about 150 yards upstream
from where the attack occurred.
The fifth attack
came right after the attack of Stillwell and Fisher, when Joseph Dunn, 14, was attacked
nearby. Dunn was bit in the leg but was saved by his brother. The bite was not
fatal and Dunn was treated at Saint Peter's University Hospital where he would
be released on September 15, 1916.
News spread throughout
the country as journalists ran headlines such as “Shark Kills Bather Off Jersey
Beach". There was panic amongst the
beach resort industry and led to the former director of the Philadelphia
Aquarium downplaying the threat of sharks.
He made the following statement in the newspaper the Philadelphia Public
Ledger.
“Despite the death of Charles Vansant and the report [of]
two sharks having been caught in that vicinity recently, I do not believe there
is any reason why people should hesitate to go in swimming at the beaches for
fear of man-eaters. The information in regard to the sharks is indefinite and I
hardly believe that Vansant was bitten by a man-eater. Vansant was in the surf
playing with a dog and it may be that a small shark had drifted in at high
water, and was marooned by the tide. Being unable to move quickly and without
food, he had come in to bite the dog and snapped at the man in passing.”
The hunt was on for
the “Jersey Man-Eater” as fishermen came from all over to catch the predator.
One was Michael Schleisser, the lion tamer for the Barnum and Bailey’s circus.
In all honesty, the story is quite outlandish. Schleisser, who was fishing off
Raritan Bay, came across a large 7.5-foot Great White shark. The shark nearly destroyed his boat before Schleissier
was able to kill the shark with a broken oar. When they cut open the shark’s belly,
they retrieved a “suspicious fleshy material”. Schleissier had the shark
mounted and put on display in Manhattan for several years, but unfortunately
the shark became lost in history and no one knows where it is now.
By October, 1916,
Scientific American Magazine became involved and added to the public panic. Robert
Murphy and John Nichols wrote in October 1916:
There is something peculiarly sinister in the shark's
make-up. The sight of his dark, lean [dorsal] fin lazily cutting zig-zags in
the surface of some quiet, sparkling summer sea, and then slipping out of sight
not to appear again, suggests an evil spirit. His leering, chinless face, his
great mouth with its rows of knife-like teeth, which he knows too well to use
on the fisherman's gear; the relentless fury with which, when his last hour has
come, he thrashes on deck and snaps at his enemies; his toughness, his brutal,
nerveless vitality and insensibility to physical injury, fail to elicit the
admiration one feels for the dashing, brilliant, destructive, gastronomic
bluefish, tunny, or salmon.
The shark attacks
of 1916 became one of the inspirations for Peter Benchley’s book, Jaws. Jaws
became a bestseller in 1974 and would become the first summer Blockbuster movie
in 1975 when millions of people became scared of going into the water. In
Matawan Creek today there is an eerie reminder of what took place over almost
107 years ago. A train bridge that crosses the area between Raritan Bay and the
Creek itself has a mural of a giant shark head looking as if it is ripping
through the surface of the water with its mouth open to the still calm sea.
