Close to Shore (24 page)

“It is the white shark which has been at work, and this is the second time in history this type has been seen north of Cape Hatteras,” Nichols continued. “My own belief is that [this] single fish . . . has killed all four of the bathers and that if . . . it is killed the attacks will end.”

Nichols made swift strides in his theory when, after returning from Matawan, he was able to persuade Frederic Lucas the victims were most likely attacked by a shark. Subsequently, in a humbling if not devastating moment, Dr. Lucas admitted on the front page of
The
New York Times
that he had been wrong.

With the headline “Science Admits Its Error. No Longer Doubted That Big Fish Attack Men,” the
Times
reported that “the foremost authority on sharks in this country has doubted that any type of shark ever attacked a human being, and has published his doubts, but the recent cases have changed his view.”

So Nichols and Murphy set out into the waters of Jamaica Bay in their launch rigged to fish for the big shark. The scientists noted, to their dismay, that the weakfish and fluke in the bay had all but disappeared. Plants in Queens and Brooklyn daily discharged millions of gallons of raw sewage into the bay. The waste was slowly poisoning the clams and oysters—by 1921, the health department would abolish shellfishing in Jamaica Bay—but in 1916 the organic torrent from the city may have lured the shark.

They had armed themselves with several harpoons in preparation for an encounter with the big fish. Guns and knives were also aboard, to the extent they would matter. The scientists were under no illusions about their chances versus
Carcharodon carcharias
if it appeared in its full-grown size.

Forsaking sleep, they cruised the deep channel in Rockaway Inlet. In the daylight Nichols could see some distance through the water, paying special attention to sandbars, against which the sun would silhouette his quarry. Whereas the brown shark, the commonest large shark in the latitude of New York, Nichols noted, kept below the surface in the manner of the littoral species, its fin and tail seldom seen unless it was crossing a sandbar, the pelagic species like the white shark rode high in the water, announcing their presence like a surfacing U-boat.

Suddenly, on the second day, Nichols felt his heart protesting against his ribs. He had spotted a shark moving along the edge of the bar. Nichols carefully worked the sloop toward it, avoiding the shoals where he would go aground, and followed the winding course of the shark. Murphy narrowed his eyes as the sloop swung from one tack to another, and finally saw an elusive shadow moving a couple of boat lengths ahead. The light in the water could play tricks with the shadow, blowing it to monstrous size, but then the shadow slipped too far ahead to discern its true substance. Murphy tightened his grip on the harpoon and wondered if the iron would slow a white shark. Whaling in the South Atlantic, the power of five- and seven-foot blue sharks had astounded him. “We have seen one hooked, shot full of lead from a repeating rifle, then harpooned, hauled on deck, and disemboweled, yet it continued alive and alert for a long while, thrashing its tail and opening and shutting its weird expressionless eyes . . .”

As the huge shadow darted, Murphy readied himself for the possibility it may turn and shoot under the bowsprit, giving him but a fraction of an instant to strike. He knew well the consequence of a bad throw—he'd watch the iron graze the fish and “the pole stand quivering in the sand, while the shark darts away into deep water and is gone.” He was not sure anymore if he knew the consequence of a good throw. For the local sharks, he knew it was a sure strike and “away goes the shark, spinning out the coil of rope and carrying the tub over the water with
a rush.” But what was a harpoon to an enraged three-thousand-pound fish: a bothersome needle? Should he pray it would come close enough for the guns and the knives? Or pray that it wouldn't?

When the shark came within striking distance Murphy surged forward, heart drumming, hoisting the harpoon, angling for purchase on the bowsprit. But the fearsome shadow was what Nichols and Murphy immediately recognized as a sand shark,
Carcharias taurus,
what is now known to shark biologists as the sand-tiger shark, a common, large, fish-eating species in the region, not known as an attacker of humans. With dismay the men exhaled, perhaps for a moment doubting their pursuit of a white shark. Lucas had warned them that almost every case of a captured purported man-eater he had investigated on the coasts of New Jersey or Long Island resolved to be “harmless, if ugly-looking, sand sharks.”

The shark disappeared and the scientists spent the day and the night looking for larger shadows in the bay. Other sharks appeared, but nothing to arouse their interest. Nicholas and Murphy discussed leaving Jamaica Bay for the waters of Lower New York Bay and guarded against the unwelcome feeling that the trip was turning into a failure.

Nichols had hunted sharks many times for the gains of science and knew how a man squandered hours and days on the water and grew sleepy and cramped and bored—until, when it was least expected, a shark exploded from the deep. Murphy had learned the same lessons in the South Atlantic, having spent endless days stalking the great whales. But they didn't have endless days now.

As the sun came up on the second day, Nichols and Murphy trailed steel hooks on strong chains baited with the “tempting morsel” of a cow's lung. Animal blood radiated and diffused in the water as the launch rode the gentle bay, bearing the long shadows of men, tired and bored, on the waters they had known since boyhood that now seemed somehow alien.

Like a Tale from the Stone Age

T
here was nothing left to do but cut open the fish to see what its stomach contents revealed, but Michael Schleisser disappointed his audience. Instead he recruited men to lift the huge creature into his automobile.

Back at home in his Harlem row house, Schleisser worked quickly, for the fish would decay rapidly. That afternoon, in the basement given over to a taxidermy studio, Schleisser began the enormous task of mounting the shark. It measured seven and a half feet long and weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. It was a dark, dull blue on top and white underneath. Schleisser cut the fish open and removed the stomach, whereupon a terrible odor filled the basement, and the taxidermist found himself sorting through a large, grisly pile of flesh and bones. There was a mix of large and small bones, and the bones appeared to be human. Schleisser weighed the flesh and bones together and they came to approximately fifteen pounds. As he studied the gruesome scene in the dim light of his basement, Schleisser came to believe he had caught the man-eating shark that had terrorized New Jersey for the first two weeks of July. As Schleisser began to mount the shark, that Tuesday, July 14, President Wilson had already suspended the war on sharks, and John Treadwell Nichols and Robert Cushman Murphy were making plans to hunt the predator in Jamaica Bay, unaware that an apparent man-eater had been caught. Schleisser, a showman at heart, felt no immediate need to inform the world. He wanted to confirm that the bones in the shark's stomach were human, and for that he required the assistance of a scientist. Schleisser resolved to ship the bones to the most famous scientist he personally knew, one whose word was beyond reproach. But first he made a phone call to his local newspaper, the
Home News.

The newspaper was in a hurry to get the story out, but recognizing the publicity value of having the shark to display, the editors were willing to hold the story until Schleisser had completed his taxidermy. Four days later, Schleisser brought the stuffed and mounted shark to the offices of the Harlem newspaper. The next day, the
Home News
proudly devoted its front page to one of the most dramatic stories in its history, with the headline: “Harlem Man in Tiny Boat Kills a 7 1⁄2 Foot Man-eating Shark.”

“Like a tale from the stone age,” the story began, “when men went forth single-handed, armed with nothing but a club, to slay ferocious beasts, is the story of two uptown men, one of whom, with the broken handle of an oar held off a monster man-eating shark after a terrific battle and finally killed it.” There was the picture of Schleisser posing with the shark mounted across the sawhorses.

That day and the next, Thursday, July 20, the newspaper promised its readers “the monster will be placed in the window of the
Home News,
at 135 W. 125th St., where everyone will have an opportunity to see what a man-eating shark really looks like.” Next to the man-eater, the
Home News
promised, would be a display of the large and small bones found in its stomach.

T
he box had arrived in the middle of the week at the American Museum of Natural History, addressed to the director, Frederic Augustus Lucas. It was not unusual for the museum to receive a box of dry bones, poison adders, or shrunken heads for that matter. This box received special attention because an accompanying note claimed that the bones the box contained had been retrieved from the stomach of the man-eating shark.

Lucas would have treated the claim with his usual skepticism had it not come from someone he knew and trusted. Michael Schleisser and Frederic Lucas were close enough that before Schleisser made a major exploration of Brazil, he requested and received a letter of introduction from Dr. Lucas to a curator at the U.S. National Museum. However, much as Lucas respected the taxidermy work Schleisser had done for the museum, the director remained suspicious that Schleisser was not purely devoted to science. “I am giving a letter of introduction to Mr. Michael Schleisser who is about to make a trip to the interior of Brazil,” Lucas had written. “I have known Mr. Schleisser for a number of years and consider him reliable, although I rather feel that his expedition is largely on account of his love of exploration and partly for photographing.”

The problem Schleisser confronted Dr. Lucas with was
typical of the taxidermist: a discovery that was arguably scientific, but questionable, perhaps irresponsible, even sensational. Before him, unquestionably, was a pile of masticated human bones. Although the bones challenged his theory that sharks were unable to bite through human bones, Dr. Lucas was grateful to Schleisser for what he came to regard as a contribution to science, and wrote a note on museum stationery thanking the taxidermist.

Dear Mr. Schleisser: I am very much obliged to you for
your courtesy in letting me see the bones taken from the shark. They are parts of the left radius and ulna of one of the anterior left ribs. There is no doubt about this. They have,
as you see, been badly shattered. Can you tell me the exact species of shark from which these bones were taken, or if you are in doubt, I am sure that Mr. Nichols would be very glad to call and determine the species exactly? Again thanking you for your kindness, I am, F.A. LUCAS, Director.

F
rom Brooklyn and Staten Island and Greenwich Village they came. Thousands clambered aboard the trolleys to 125th Street in Harlem that Sunday. By the time John Treadwell Nichols arrived at the
Home News
office
,
a mob of thirty thousand people had gathered in front of it. Americans at the turn of the century were accustomed to behavior in crowds, for parades and public spectacles were commonplace. So that
Sunday the mob formed a line, and began to pass before the window in orderly fashion. There were gasps and cries of “Monster!” Adults shuddered and turned away. Mothers pulled children to the side. Many refused to believe what they saw. The shark was monstrous to the point of being scarcely believable.

John Nichols pushed to the front and lingered, staring at the man-eater. His first glance eliminated all doubt. The preternaturally wide, torpedo-shaped body; the crescent caudal fin and long, narrow pectoral fins; the small second dorsal and anal fins; the bifurcated coloring; the large gill slits, broad conical snout, and black eyes; the huge teeth, distinctively triangular and serrated, and, unlike most sharks, the teeth in its top and bottom jaws almost symmetrical. The jaws were large enough to have taken human life—“yawning jaws and vicious teeth,”
a reporter called them. It was unquestionably
Carcharodon
carcharias.

Independent experts had determined that the bones taken from the shark's stomach were human. Physicians identified the eleven-inch bone as the shinbone of a boy—presumably Lester Stilwell's—and a section of rib bone as belonging to a young man, perhaps Charles Bruder. Dr. Lucas, however, maintained these judgments were “incorrect.” The bones were certainly human, Lucas agreed, but based on the size of the shark and the condition of the bones, he claimed they were parts of the left forearm and left upper rib taken from the body of a robust man who had been “dead some time and not the result of any active attack.” This was not proof, in Dr. Lucas's opinion, that a shark could bite clean through human bone, or that sharks attack
man. This conclusion supported Dr. Lucas's lifework as well
as his theory that the species of the attacker was unknown. In
a letter to Bureau of Fisheries Commissioner Hugh Smith, Lucas declared that the great white with human remains inside was not the killer and unfortunately his colleague John Nichols “was not able to get any information other than that published in the newspapers.”

Time, however, favored the young Dr. Nichols. Unknown to Lucas, Nichols, and their contemporaries, great whites live not only in the tropics but all over the world, and one of the largest populations is off the New Jersey–New York coast. This population is mostly juveniles, however, who take smaller prey and seldom stray close to shore.

O
n August 8, 1916, Hugh Smith wrote Frederic Lucas: “The excitement in this matter appears to have died down, much
to the relief of this office, and I hope nothing will occur to resuscitate it.”

By the end of that summer of 1916, the last summer before America entered the Great War, the great white shark had fallen from the front pages of the
Times
and the
Sun
and the
World.
The next spring, Woodrow Wilson told Congress: “The day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth . . . the world must be made safe for Democracy.” Even in the era preoccupied with “Over There” and “Lick a Stamp and Lick the Kaiser!” on to the time of flappers and radio, through the Great Depression and the Second World War and beyond, the shark would live on as an enduring presence in the American imagination.

On July 10, 1917, the one-year anniversary week of the attacks, President Wilson appointed Herbert Hoover to raise food production for the war effort, yet bigger news was that five hundred bathers fled screaming from the waters of Rockaway Park after swimmers spied a large fin near shore.

Over the next few decades, New York newspapers sounded what became an annual alarm, and the parents of Matawan forbade their children from swimming in Matawan Creek. The grand Engleside Hotel in Beach Haven was demolished for wood during World War II and, later still, the New Essex and Sussex Hotel in Spring Lake was converted to condominiums.

Today all evidence of the great white shark of that long-ago summer is gone. The carcass of the fish disappeared shortly after it was displayed in the window of the
Home News,
and some years later, a scientist spotted its jaw hanging in a window of a Manhattan shop at 86th and Broadway before it disappeared forever. Yet it was the legacy of this young, aberrant, perhaps sickly or injured great white to frame the way people perceive sharks. In 1974, Peter Benchley invoked the 1916 shark as the role model for his fictional white shark in
Jaws.

By the end of the twentieth century, the deadly predator
of 1916 immortalized by Benchley
would begin to fade from popular culture. By the 1990s, the concept of the rogue shark had fallen out of scientific favor for lack of proof other than anecdotal material. Shark researchers even began to doubt Nichols's conclusion that the killer of all four victims in 1916 had been a single shark—or even, in all cases, a great white shark. Some suggest that a bull shark,
Carcharhinus leucas,
was the killer of Matawan Creek, as it is the only man-eating species that routinely passes into freshwater, whereas for
Carcharodon carcharias,
the trip would be extraordinary.

Indeed, by the twenty-first century,
Carcharodon carcharias
had assumed a new status as magnificent yet misunderstood sea creature, rare and accidental killer of man, and endangered species protected by the laws of numerous countries, including the United States. So radical was the change in attitude that
in 2000 Peter Benchley pleaded with Australians not to destroy a great white that had killed a young swimmer. “This was
not a rogue shark, tantalized by the taste of human flesh and bound now to kill and kill again. Such creatures do not exist, despite what you might have derived from
Jaws
. . . . Let us mourn the man and forgive the animal, for, in truth, it knew not what it did.”

Hermann Oelrichs, whose 1891 reward was never collected, would have appreciated Benchley's view.

Still, in an era of fisheries that would eradicate it, science that would plumb all its mysteries, and global media that would reveal its every move, the great white endures in the depths where it has always reigned: in cautionary tales told by mothers and fathers, in whispers in the unconscious, in offshore shadows, and in ripples on a tidal creek.