Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916
The incidents occurred during a deadly summer heat wave and polio epidemic in the United States that drove thousands of people to the seaside resorts of the Jersey Shore.
Sightings of large sharks swimming off the coast of New Jersey were reported by sea captains entering the ports of Newark and New York City but were dismissed.
The second major attack occurred on Thursday, July 6, 1916, at the resort town of Spring Lake, New Jersey, 45 miles (72 km) north of Beach Haven.
Located 30 miles (48 km) north of Spring Lake and inland of Raritan Bay, Matawan resembled a Midwestern town rather than an Atlantic beach resort.
After locating the boy's body and attempting to return to shore, Fisher was also bitten by the shark in front of the townspeople, losing Stillwell in the process.
[13] As the national media descended on Beach Haven, Spring Lake, and Matawan, the Jersey Shore attacks started a shark panic.
[14] According to Capuzzo, this panic was "unrivaled in American history", "sweeping along the coasts of New York and New Jersey and spreading by telephone and wireless, letter and postcard.
Major American newspapers such as the Boston Herald, Chicago Sun-Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle placed the story on the front page.
[20] A press conference was convened on July 8, 1916, at the American Museum of Natural History, with scientists Frederic Augustus Lucas, John Treadwell Nichols, and Robert Cushman Murphy as panelists.
Nevertheless, Nichols—the only ichthyologist in the trio—warned swimmers to stay close to shore and to take advantage of the netted bathing areas installed at public beaches after the first attack.
The House of Representatives appropriated $5,000 ($140,000 in 2023 dollars) for eradicating the New Jersey shark threat, and President Woodrow Wilson scheduled a meeting with his Cabinet to discuss the fatal attacks.
Treasury secretary William Gibbs McAdoo suggested that the Coast Guard be mobilized to patrol the Jersey Shore and protect sun bathers.
[34] On July 14, Harlem taxidermist and Barnum and Bailey lion tamer Michael Schleisser caught a 7.5-foot (2.3 m), 325-pound (147 kg) shark while fishing in Raritan Bay, only a few miles from the mouth of Matawan Creek.
[38] Skeptical individuals offered alternative hypotheses, including opinions suggesting a non-shark perpetrator and even the influence of ongoing events associated with World War I.
The anonymous writer claimed, "These sharks may have devoured human bodies in the waters of the German war zone and followed liners to this coast, or even followed the Deutschland herself, expecting the usual toll of drowning men, women, and children."
However, our examination of the site reveals that the size of the "creek," its depth, and salinity regime were closer to a marine embayment and that a smallish white clearly could have wandered into the area.
Scientists such as Victor M. Coppleson and Jean Butler, relying on evidence presented by Lucas and Murphy in 1916, assert that a single shark was responsible.
[52] Before 1916, American scholars doubted that sharks would fatally wound a living person in the temperate waters of the northeastern United States without provocation.
[58] Frederic Lucas, director of the American Museum of Natural History, questioned whether a shark even as large as 30 feet (9 m) could snap a human bone.
In July 1916, ichthyologist and editor for the National Geographic Society Hugh McCormick Smith published an article in the Newark Star-Eagle describing some shark species as "harmless as doves and others the incarnation of ferocity."
He concluded that "because it is evident that even a relatively small white shark, weighing two or three hundred pounds, might readily snap the largest human bones by a jerk of its body, after it has bitten through the flesh.
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.
"[25] Nichols later documented the occurrence of the great white shark in his biological survey Fishes of the Vicinity of New York City (1918), "Carcharodon carcharias (Linn.)
"[63] After the first fatality, newspaper cartoonists began using sharks as caricatures for political figures, German U-boats, Victorian morality and fashion, polio, and the deadly heat wave threatening the Northeast at the time.
Fernicola notes, "Since 1916 was among the years that Americans were trying to break away from the rigidity and conservatism of the Victorian period, one comic depicted a risqué polka-dot bathing suit and advertised it as the secret weapon to keep sharks away from our swimmers."
Another cartoon depicted "an exasperated individual at the end of a dock that displays a 'Danger: No Swimming' sign and mentions the three most emphasized 'danger' topics of the day: 'Infantile Paralysis (polio), Epidemic Heat Wave, and Sharks in the Ocean'."
"[64] With World War I ongoing in 1916 and America's growing distrust of Germany, cartoonists depicted U-boats with the mouth and fins of a shark assaulting Uncle Sam while he wades in the water.
[65] In 1974, writer Peter Benchley published Jaws, a novel about a rogue great white shark that terrorizes the fictional Long Island coastal community of Amity.
Spielberg's film references the events of 1916: Brody (Roy Scheider) and Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) urge Amity's Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) to close the beaches on the Fourth of July after the deaths of two swimmers and a fisherman.
[67] The 1916 fatal attacks are the subject of three studies: Richard G. Fernicola's In Search of the "Jersey Man-Eater" (1987) and Twelve Days of Terror (2001), and Michael Capuzzo's Close to Shore (2001).
