Close to Shore (19 page)

Under a Full Moon

A
great dorsal fin sliced the middle of the brown creek as the shark swam along prairies of sedge grass and wound slowly past deserted banks, undetected by anyone. The air was warm and ripe with the sulfuric rot of the marsh. The water was rising under the shark, and it was attuning itself to new atmospheres. It passed easily through changing water temperatures, and the rising tide was protecting its salt balance.

Also unseen, in the bright afternoon sky, the moon's orbit was on a course that would put it in the earth's shadow two days later. The coming lunar eclipse of July 14, 1916, held no interest for scientists then, but the phases of the moon were fundamental to the shark. The hidden moon was waxing, three days from full, radiating near maximum gravitational pull, and the great white was growing excited and vibrant in reaction to the moon's surging power. Around the world, ocean tides were rising and the tide was coming up Matawan Creek now, swelling the banks and lifting the shark, bracing it with life-giving seawater.

The shark was moving upriver no faster than a walking man, swaying its body from side to side, smelling the water and processing information with great rapidity. As the fish swam,
its huge olfactory lobe was evaluating the smells and sounds in the water for potential prey.

Streaming onward in the creek, the shark began to whip powerfully, picking up speed until it was sending water rolling toward the banks. No one saw the shark moving then, nor would anyone have understood the pull of the hidden moon like a trigger on the jaws of the shark, although a man may have felt something different in his blood as well.

The citizens of Matawan in 1916 would not have laughed at the idea that the full moon exerted a powerful effect on people, plants, and animals. It was well known at the time that “lunacy” gripped the residents of jails and mental hospitals during the full moon. In the old German, French, and Scot folk cultures brought to Matawan, evil preyed on human beings under a full moon. If by 1916 lunar superstitions were the fodder of emerging modern entertainment (
Dracula
was a popular novel), “moon farming,” following the cycles of the moon when planting or harvesting crops, and other myths continued to flourish. Moonlight is harmful to the health, the not-yet-old wives' tales said; fleece will be lighter if sheared when the moon is waning; pork from pigs killed in a new moon will shrink when cooked; rail fences built in the light of an old moon will sink into the ground; wood cut in the waxing of the moon will be “sappy”; fish will bite more on the night of a full moon.

Scientists were dismayed by the persistence of popular myths. “Scientific men devote a deplorable amount of time felling Antaeus, in the shape of one or another of a host of irrepressible superstitions,” Charles Fitzhugh Talman wrote in 1913 in
Scientific American.
“Whether the giant happens to be the equinoctial storm, or unlucky thirteen, or the climatically impotent Gulf Stream, or the super-moon, the Hercules has not yet arisen who shall crush him conclusively in mid-air.”

The moon held little mystery for science in the early 1900s. Though study of the heavenly body continued, the work was quantitative—the distance from the earth, the strength of the reflected light, the size of the satellite. Scientists believed they understood the moon, and each experiment served only to further prove already established ideas. During the lunar eclipse of that July 14, thousands of New Yorkers would crowd rooftops and towers to watch with fascination the passage of the earth's shadow across the face of the moon, one of the clearest lunar eclipses seen in years. Yet Professor Harold Jacobi of the Astronomical Department at Columbia University declared “it was of no material interest to scientists because it could not possibly reveal anything that was not already a matter of positive knowledge.”

Later, scientists would find evidence that sharks attack more frequently during very high tides, caused by the gravitational pull of the full moon. A preliminary study by researchers at the International Shark Attack File has found a worldwide correlation between “the phases of the moon, the height of tides and the frequency of shark attacks.” Researchers are studying the phenomenon, according to George Burgess, “from a practical standpoint” to “cut down on the number of attacks by warning people of an increased risk.” While there is yet no conclusive proof the white shark fits the pattern, “a study of white sharks near South Africa shows a peak in attacks at the highest of high tides.”

There are several possible explanations for lunar-related shark attacks. The folklore about lunar effects on animals may be true. “There is no doubt that an animal could be more on edge or more active in looking for food due to the phases of the moon,” Burgess says. Sharks could be reacting to the effect of the moon on other ocean species. The reproduction of coral and many types of fish coincides with the cycles of the moon. High tides also reduce beach space, drawing prey such as seals into the water and sharks nearer shore.

Whatever the reason, as the juvenile great white shark
cruised through the murky waters of Matawan Creek under a weakening sun and a waxing moon, the waters of the creek were rising. It was nearly two o'clock on the afternoon of July 12, 1916, and the moon would soon be at its most luminous, the creek tides rising to the highest recorded levels of the month.

Like a Cat Shakes a Mouse

I
n the low gloom of a factory by the railroad tracks, the hammer blurred as if trailing sparks, and in less than a minute the battered hands of William Stilwell held a delicate but sturdy round basket. Swiftly, Stilwell struck another basket into existence and stacked it with the others. The shouts of the line boss and the thudding of hammers wielded by men and boys along the bench filled the scorching, humid air. Bill Stilwell's chest and arms dripped with sweat, but the line boss paid fifty cents for a hundred baskets and Stilwell worked with the speed of a man who had a young wife and five young children to feed and could take home three dollars that day if he raced.

There were worse jobs along the creek than making baskets. Hauling tile and clay in the baking yards; breathing paints and varnishes or cooking scalding columns of flaked rice, which was invented in Matawan. The basket factory and its long, low line of wooden warehouses lettered
ANDERSON
'
S BUILDING MATERIALS & BASKETS
had its own sawmill, a huge and dangerous blade that sent rafts of logs to the Chesapeake. Basketwork was comparatively safe and paid well. Occasionally, Frank Anderson himself came through the basket factory, and the men were glad to see him, for Frank upped the pay to seventy cents for a hundred baskets at the peak of the summer market. Fashionable ladies preferred their summertime bouquets of flowers in lovely baskets, like Anderson's, and New Yorkers used them to carry home the season's Jersey peaches and tomatoes.

Bill Stilwell's work wasn't easy, but despite the labor struggles of the era, the good, honest workman was widely romanticized. “William Stilwell is of the sturdy type of American workman,” the
New York Herald
wrote, “with a large and happy family, occupying their own cottage, surrounded by a pretty garden.”

Now and then Stilwell watched his oldest son, Russell, getting the hang of it at age sixteen, and kept an eye down the line on Lester, his youngest boy. When he saw Lester, small and struggling, he could only hope the boy wouldn't get the shakes and hurt himself. Bill worried about Lester especially. His youngest boy did well in school and was ambitious, not only making peach baskets but selling a weekly magazine as a “subscription agent”—saving enough money to keep himself in clothes and books for a year. But the boy seemed weak and suffered from epileptic fits Doc Reynolds couldn't do much about. Stilwell also worried because President Wilson was talking about a child labor law setting a minimum work age of fourteen, and what would the Stilwell children do for extra money if they couldn't make baskets?

As the sun slanted over the creek and Bill Stilwell had passed a couple of hundred baskets, he saw the line boss give a nod, and the younger boys dropped their hammers and made for the door, Lester with them. Bill hated to lose the money, but Lester had already earned seventy-five cents making peach baskets that morning. Besides, it was brutally hot, and it was a tradition for the boys to sneak away to the creek on summer days. It was a break Bill Stilwell had enjoyed himself on many a lazy summer afternoon thirty years before. Lester dutifully ran up to his father to say good-bye, and Bill told him to be careful and stay near the dock in case the shakes came.

Shortly before two o'clock, Lester Stilwell, who wore knickers and suspenders to school and a cap over his Dutch boy, was running free on Main Street. Lester was one of the youngest and poorest boys who played in the creek, but soon all confinements and distinctions would disappear. In the waters of the creek, noted the
New York Herald
, Stilwell swam with boys who were “all of the same age and types of the best kind of American boys. They spend their school vacations working in a basket factory mornings and playing in the afternoons.” Near the small library, Lester met Albert O'Hara, eleven, and Anthony Bublin, thirteen, whose older brothers also worked in the basket factory. Another thirteen-year-old, Charles E. Van Brunt Jr., joined the group.

On Main an older boy joined them—Frank Clowes, nineteen, taking time off from his work at his father's gas station, the first in the area. Frank was a mechanic and a carpenter and moved with a knowing swagger.

Young Johnson Cartan, from Cartan's Department Store, trailed along, and the boys moved quickly now, since their fathers and bosses cut them only a few minutes. If Johnson was afraid of going in the water after what had happened the previous day, he didn't show it to the other boys. Everyone agreed that his cousin Renny was as crazy as old Captain Cottrell, whose story of a shark in the creek had made its way around town.

The six boys went down Main to Dock Road, cutting behind the barn to the creek. It was bright and hot and the boys threw their clothes on the banks and began diving off the dilapidated docks at the old Wyckoff steamboat landing. One by one, Clowes, the older boy, then Cartan and O'Hara and Stilwell, dived and stroked to the middle of the creek and swam back to the docks and dived again in a ragged chain.

Some two hours earlier, unknown to the boys, Captain Cottrell had sailed through Matawan warning of the shark he had seen. A few swimmers had been warned away. But that had been during the noon hour, when most people along the creek were at luncheon, and Captain Cottrell did not spread the alarm far enough. Convinced Matawan was safe, Cottrell had motored down the creek to warn others.

Now as boys took turns diving and swimming back to the docks, Albert O'Hara had taken the lead in the chain. He was swimming ahead of Johnson Cartan, Frank Clowes, and Lester Stilwell back to the dock to make another dive. O'Hara was about to climb out of the water when Lester Stilwell cried, “Watch me float, fellas!” Lester gingerly laid his body on the surface of the creek and achieved the small miracle of floating, a proud moment for him, for the boy was so weak that he usually had trouble staying afloat. In the next instant, Charlie Van Brunt saw what he called “the biggest, blackest fish he had
ever seen,” streaking underwater for Lester. Lester screamed, and Charlie saw the shark strike, twisting and rolling as it hit Lester, exhibiting its stark white belly and gleaming teeth. To Johnson Cartan, the sight was something he found words for only later. Something huge, something that looked like “an old black weather-beaten board,” rose up out of the water high over little Lester Stilwell. As the boys looked on in horror, they saw Lester's arm in the mouth of the shark and “Lester, being shaken, like a cat shakes a mouse, and then he went under, head first.” Both Lester and the shark disappeared. As the shark jerked the boy underwater, it gave such a mighty swish through the water that its tail hit Albert O'Hara and knocked him against the pilings supporting the pier. Too shocked to feel the painful scrape, O'Hara stared at the reddening circle on the creek and cried, “Oh, Lester's gone!” For a horrific second, Lester Stilwell reappeared, rising out of the water screaming and waving his arms wildly. Then, in an instant, he was pulled back under and disappeared for good.

Small waves had upset the waters of the creek, but they were smoothing and the water was crimson where Lester had been. Suddenly, boys cried, “Oh my God, he's gone!” and swam and stumbled and scrambled out of the water and up on the muddy banks, crying, “Shark! Shark!” Rushing in a group past their heaped clothes, the five boys ran naked down Dock Road and turned right on Main. Frank Clowes was leading them, for he was the oldest, but they were all running dripping wet and wild-eyed into the heart of town, shouting that a shark had taken Lester Stilwell.

A Splendid Type of Young Manhood

I
n the languid middle of a Wednesday afternoon, Asher Wooley was busy under the striped canopy of his new hardware store
at 116 Main Street, setting out watering cans, packs of seed, and flyswatters to tempt passersby. A few doors down, the white-smocked butchers of the new Bell Beef Company were visible behind the big plate-glass window at number 120. Down the block under the shaded awning of Cartan's Department Store, women were picking through the bushels of fruit and vegetables stacked in front, while inside the store—long and dimly lit by hanging lamps—half a dozen Cartans and associates pulled items from open shelves packed with bolts of fabric and shoes, teapots and enamel washbasins.

Abruptly, with a panic that would be remembered for years,
Charlie Van Brunt, Johnson Cartan, Frank Clowes, Albert O'Hara, and Anthony Bublin came running down Main Street, naked and smeared with mud and grass and shouting wildly about a shark and Lester Stillwell. At “no time in recent years has there been so much continued excitement hereabouts as on Wednesday,” the
Keyport Weekly
would report, noting that the hysterical boys had neglected to dress themselves before running into town.

The children hollered, “Shark! A shark got Lester!” to anyone who would listen. A crowd surrounded the boys, trying to calm them. Constable Mulsoff, hurrying to the commotion from the barbershop, had a crisis on his hands. Panic was quickly spreading. A crowd set off to look for a boat “to find the man-eater.” Other friends of the Stilwells who had been nearby were already running frantically along the creek, shouting, “Lester! Lester!” Mulsoff thought it eerie that young Stilwell had disappeared shortly after Captain Cottrell's crazed warning of a shark, but the constable was a sturdy and rational man and the boys' claims were scarcely more believable. He was eager to restore a sense of order.

Moving quickly, the constable rounded up a group of men and marched them toward the creek to rescue the boy, or, more likely, to recover his drowned body. Poor Lester Stilwell must have suffered one of his epileptic fits, the constable feared, perhaps worsened by a sudden cramp, and gone under. The rescuers included men from the Cartan and Van Brunt families, relieved their sons were safe, and Bill Stilwell. Hurrying from the basket factory with Russell, his oldest boy, Bill found his wife, Luella, who he feared was near to collapsing with grief. But Luella
proceeded with her husband to the creek, trailing young Mary, Anna, and Jennie, Lester's sisters.

Upset that no one believed their story of a shark, some of the boys continued on down Main to the door of the Royal Tailors, where Stanley Fisher was sewing a custom suit. Some town residents “thought the boys were playing a prank until finally they appealed to Stanley Fisher,” the
New York Herald
reported. “They knew he was a powerful swimmer . . . and a friend of all the boys in town.” With evident pride, the
Keyport Weekly
reported that Fisher was “a splendid type of young manhood with a host of friends.”

Schooled by his sea-captain father in everything there was to know about the water, and comfortable—by virtue of his family's prominence, his size, and his athletic ability—with leadership, Fisher decided to assume command of the crisis. Putting his sewing off for later, promptly told his assistant to take the day off and closed the shop. But not before he slipped into the back room and put on a bathing costume.

Out on Main Street, the big tailor ran into his childhood friend, George Burlew. Burlew, twenty-three, was a driver in town who listed his occupation as a “schofer,” but already showed yearnings for the sea. He got work when he could as a commercial fisherman. His dream was to be a big-game fisherman, taking out charters in his own vessel, and the idea of a shark excited him, although he, too, assumed it couldn't be true. When Stanley Fisher told him to put on a bathing costume, he felt a surge of adrenaline. Along with the possibility of seeing a shark, Burlew was anxious to make sure that young Charlie Van Brunt, his neighbor on Main Street, was okay.

A huge crowd of townspeople was already gathered along the dock and banks of Matawan Creek. Among shouts of “Lester,” men in rowboats soberly patrolled the banks, poling the murky water. Bill and Luella Stilwell and their son and daughters stared in shock at the spot where Lester had vanished. The arrival of Stanley Fisher sent a wave of anticipation through the crowd. The tailor was said to be the strongest man in town.

Fisher quickly took command. He and Burlew climbed into a rowboat and strung chicken wire weighted with stones in the shallower water downcreek, stretching a barrier twenty feet from bank to bank, “so the tide wouldn't take the body out,” Burlew recalled. Fisher and Burlew joined the other boats poling for the body, but after an hour of working the creek with no success, people on the banks were stirring restlessly and Fisher and Burlew suddenly dove overboard.

Shouts and warnings to watch out for a shark sounded from the banks, but the men ignored them and swam to the middle of the creek, where they began to make dives to the deep center channel where the poling couldn't reach and where Fisher believed Stilwell's body had sunk.

The men plunged toward the creek bottom, disappearing for several moments then surfacing, gasping for air. The creek was so murky, Fisher and Burlew said they couldn't see anything, and the bottom of the channel was too deep to reach. After almost half an hour of exhausting dives, they surfaced and stroked to the opposite bank, where they paused to discuss what to do next. They concluded there was nothing more they or their fellow townsfolk could do except perhaps wait for low tide to find Lester Stilwell's body. Fisher and Burlew swam slowly back toward the bank, where the crowd had assembled.

In the center of the creek, Fisher abruptly decided to make one more dive for the bottom, and, upending his big body, plunged under the surface. But again he came up empty-handed. Ignoring pleas to call off the search, Fisher plunged once more toward the bottom. George Burlew was nearing the dock when he heard his friend break the surface and cry, “I've got it!” Shouts and cheers ringed the shore. Fisher had found Lester Stilwell!

Riding the enthusiasm of the crowd, two men rowed out quickly toward the center of the creek to help Fisher bring up the body. George Burlew swam out to help his friend, but the sensation of the water churning furiously caused him to stop. What he saw in the center of the creek would stay with him the rest of his life.

Stanley Fisher now called, “He's got me!” Screaming and fighting for his life, Fisher was caught in the jaws of a shark. Years later, when George Burlew became a world-renowned big-game fisherman, setting a world record for a marlin catch, he was better able to evaluate what he witnessed. “I never saw the entire fish,” he recalled, “but from the tremendous upheaval of the huge tail that thrashed above the water it had to be a big one.” Unknown to observers then, however, the “tremendous upheaval” and the suddenness and ferocity of the attack were a signature of a great white shark.

Burlew was astonished at Fisher's courage. “Stanley was a big man, and he fought back at the shark, striking it with his fists,” Burlew recalled. “He was fighting desperately to break away, striking and kicking at it with all his might. Three or four times during the struggle the shark pulled him under, but each time he managed to get back to the surface. He seemed to be holding his own, but at best it was an uneven battle. The shark was at home in the water—and Stanley wasn't.”

Fisher finally managed to get his head once again above water, but suddenly “he was jerked under again and the men in the boat saw the dirty white belly of the shark as he turned and went down. Then the water became crimson in a constantly widening area, and when Fisher came up he was so exhausted he could hardly call out.”

Men and women stood frozen in awe and fear on the banks, and George Burlew, too, found himself unable to move to help his friend. Instead, he turned and swam frantically for the dock. He said later it wasn't an action he regretted, for terror, he explained, robbed him of conscious choice. “I don't know how I ever got to the shore, but I remember the awful fear that the shark was right behind me and had slated me for his next victim.”

Battling the big fish alone, Fisher, incredibly, had fought himself free of the shark. With astonishing purpose, he swam toward the bank. The shocked crowd saw that Fisher had one arm around Lester Stilwell, or what remained of the boy. Three of Fisher's friends tried to rescue him, but their motorboat stalled in the creek and the men frantically paddled with their hands to reach Fisher. Other boatmen managed to row close to try to provide cover for him, slapping the water with oars to keep away the shark.

Fisher had nearly reached the bank of the creek, when witnesses heard him utter a terrible cry and saw him throw his arms in the air. Stilwell's body fell into the creek, and with another desperate shout Fisher was dragged in after it, disappearing completely underwater.

“The shark! The shark!” people screamed. The boatmen again raced to assist, but Fisher, with remarkable fortitude, struggled once again toward the bank. Stilwell's body had disappeared; the shark had apparently fled with it. Fisher was able to keep his head above water now, but as the rescuers reached him, the men in the boat saw that most of the flesh between the hip and the knee of the right leg had been taken off. Having risked his life in a heroic rescue attempt and fought off the monster, Stanley Fisher deserved cheers and welcoming arms as he climbed out of the water.

Instead, anguished cries and screams rent the afternoon air. “There was a crowd of 200 or 300 people present at the time,” the
Matawan Journal
reported, “and the sight of Mr. Fisher being brought ashore was sickening, to state it mildly.”

Not until Stanley Fisher attempted to climb up the bank of the creek did he realize what had happened. He lifted his leg to examine it, said, “Oh, my God,” and dropped back into the water again. “Just about half of the thigh was missing,” Burlew recalled, “That single bite from the knee to the hip was made by a huge pair of jaws. Several women fainted, and I just missed fainting myself.” Amid the gagging of his fellow townspeople, several men laid Fisher down on the bank in a rapidly spreading pool of his own blood. A rope was wrapped around the hideously damaged leg near the hip, forming a tourniquet, and calls for a doctor resounded down Main Street.

As blood gushed from his tattered limb, Stanley Fisher began to groan with the increasing pain, but still he tried urgently to tell George Burlew something. Men and women ran from the docks up to town and along Main Street to Doc Jackson's big Victorian house at number 209, where he saw patients, but the doctor was out of town. Dr. George L. Reynolds, who owned the most notable house in town, the mansion at 94 Main, was also not at home. Next on the list was Dr. Straughn. But Dr. Straughn had left the day before for a physicians' meeting in Atlantic Highlands. With the makeshift tourniquet on his leg, Fisher lay by the creek for half an hour, until Dr. Reynolds was finally located and brought to the scene.

Reynolds had never seen such an injury. A wide, open wound, it stretched eighteen inches from below Fisher's hip to just above his knee. At the edges of what appeared to be a huge bite or a series of bites, the flesh was ragged, as if fistfuls of flesh had been extracted, Reynolds observed, by a set of “dull knives.” The femur, while scratched, was not penetrated. But the femoral artery, bleeding profusely, was completely severed. Despite the severity of the wounds, Stanley Fisher was still conscious, and as Dr. Reynolds worked to bind the huge bite, Fisher described how he had seen the shark feeding on Lester Stilwell's body and how, when he tried to recover the boy's body, the shark had released it and attacked him.

The wound bound as well as possible, Dr. Reynolds ordered men to build a stretcher. Working quickly, they cobbled together wooden planks, and a group of them strained to lift the 210-pound Fisher and bear him up the hill and across to the center of town to the Matawan train station. The nearest hospital was Monmouth Memorial, ten miles east in Long Branch, and apparently the doctor didn't believe Fisher would survive the trip in an automobile. The men set Fisher's stretcher down on the train platform, and the doctor asked for a volunteer to make the trip with Fisher. The next train to Long Branch left Matawan at 5:06
P.M
., and would arrive at 7:45
P.M
.

Fisher had suffered what the shark attack injury specialists, Doctors Davies and Campbell, would in the 1960s describe as a grade-two shark attack—dire injuries that could be survived with prompt emergency medical treatment. That afternoon in 1916, however, the medical treatment Stanley Fisher required was two hours and thirty-nine minutes away. Dr. Reynolds surely recognized that Fisher's injuries were mortal. Like other doctors of the era, he feared the bite of the shark was poisonous. With the doctor beside him, and what must have seemed an eternity of pain stretching before him, Stanley Fisher lay on his makeshift stretcher, fighting to retain consciousness as he waited for the train.

F
arther downcreek toward the bay, the vast and clear horizon over the sedge marshes was streaked by billowing tendrils of dark smoke. The smoke rose in columns and drifted lazily over the creek toward the bay from a compound of smokestacks and kilns, brickworks and tileworks that smoldered like ruins on the marsh in the afternoon air. The largest chimneys rose up around the factories and warehouses of the New Jersey Brick Company, a leading American producer of bricks. The creek bottom and the lands along the creek were veined with rich clay deposits, and so in those days Matawan produced the stoneware containers needed for a growing country: jugs, jars, churns, crocks, spittoons. Matawan boys learned counting and numbers with various sizes and colors of tile, skimmed tiles along the creek and ponds, and played hide-and-seek amid pallets of tile and brick. Yet another virtue of the brickyards was a dock that feathered out over the creek, and late on the afternoon of July 12, Joseph Dunn, twelve years old, his brother Michael, fourteen, and their friend Jerry Hourihan cut a trail through the brickyards to the dock over the creek.