Before Jaws made people fear going into the ocean there was a real man eater lurking in the waters of the New Jersey coast.
There's something idyllic about a trip to the beach, it's seen as a guaranteed good time but in 1916 people were about to learn how quickly a day at the beach can turn into a nightmare. The year had seen a heat wave and a polio outbreak so people flocked to the seaside resorts along the Jersey shore to escape. It was the 1st July in Beach Haven, the beach was full with people enjoying the sun and the ocean was full of swimmers. One of these swimmers was a young man named Charles E. Vansant (23), he was on vacation with his family from Philadelphia and staying at the Engleside Hotel. Before dinner Charles, an experienced swimmer, decided to have a quick swim in the ocean with a Chesapeake Bay Retriever that he had found playing on the beach (some reports state this as Charles's dog), after making for deeper waters the dog abruptly turned back to shore and couldn't be persuaded to come back in. Ignoring the dogs sudden change in behaviour he continued his swim and as Charles headed back to shore witnesses on the beach watched in horror as a dorsal fin broke the surface behind him and headed straight for Charles, unable to hear the screams of warning over the water and oblivious to the danger behind him, a shark suddenly clamped down on his left leg and Charles began shouting.
Seeing the man in distress, lifeguards Alexander Ott and bystander Sheridan Taylor rushed to Charles, they both state that the shark stalked them back to the beach as they carried the bleeding Charles to safety after they fought the creature to let go of his leg, his left thigh was stripped of its flesh, unable to stop the bleeding as the femoral artery had been severed Charles sadly bled to death on the managers desk at the Engleside Hotel at 6.45pm after his father, a doctor, had desperately tried to save his son.
Despite a fatal shark attack happening the beaches remained open even with sea captains reporting sightings of large sharks off the coast of New Jersey while entering ports in Newark and New York. It was now July 6th at Spring Lake, 45 miles north of Beach Haven that the Matawan Man-Eater claimed a second victim. Charles Bruder (27), a Swiss bell captain at the Essex & Sussex Hotel, was swimming around 120 metres from shore with friends, he had stated he was not afraid to enter the water and wasn't going to fear a shark, he swam ahead and started to shout "A shark bit me! A shark bit my legs off!", he was bitten in the abdomen and his legs were severed. After hearing Bruder's screams and seeing the water turn red a woman notified the two lifeguards on what she initially thought was a canoe with a red hull that had capsized and was floating on the waters surface. After rowing out, the lifeguards, Chris Anderson and George White, discovered the grim truth and pulled the grievously injured Bruder onto the boat noting their surprise at how light he was but soon realised this was due to his missing legs, Bruder's injuries were too severe and he bled to death on the way back to the shore. Witnesses described their horror at the injuries Bruder had suffered as he was brought out of the boat. Guests and workers at the Essex & Sussex Hotel and surrounding hotels raised money for Bruder's mother back in Switzerland. Bruder managed to describe the attack before succumbing to his injuries as:
"He was a big grey fellow, and rough as sandpaper. He cut me here in the side, and his belly was so rough it bruised my face and arms. That was when I yelled the first time. I thought he had gone on, but he only turned and shot back at me and snipped my left leg off."
It was now July 12th in Matawan Creek that the Man-Eater struck again. Sea captain Thomas Cottrell was walking home after a day of fishing and was shocked to see an eight foot long shark in the creek swimming under the bridge and soon told his neighbours but they dismissed his claims as a case of heat induced phantom, he then climbed into his boat and went to warn everyone of the danger. It was around 2pm that a group of young boys were playing in an area known as Wyckoff Dock, one of boys had even brought his pet dog along for a swim, Lester Stilwell (11) told his friends, that were a few feet away from him, to watch him floating on his back when they noticed what they thought was an "old, black weather-beaten board or a weathered log", it was then a dorsal fin appeared, slicing through the water that boys realised that a shark was coming right at them. The boys all rushed to exit the water but Lester was further out in the water, his friends could only look on in horror as the shark violently pulled Lester under the water and watched him scream as the shark kept pulling him underwater again and again as the water turned red around him.
The terrified boys ran into town screaming and crying for help and several men, including local tailer Stanley Fisher (24) couldn't ignore the boys desperate cries. Fisher and two of the other men dived into the water to find Lester as they believed he had suffered a seizure as Lester was known to be epileptic, it was Fisher that found Lester and while attempting to bring Lester's body to shore was also attacked by the shark. Fisher managed to break free of the jaws of the shark and make it to shore. Fisher's right thigh was severely injured with the femoral artery severed and he unfortunately bled to death at Monmouth Memorial Hospital in Long Branch at 5.30pm. Fisher's last words were reported as having done his duty by getting Lester's body away from the shark. Lester's body was finally recovered 150 feet upstream from Wyckdoff Dock on July 14th and the horrific injuries he sustained were revealed, Lester's left ankle was missing, his left thigh was mangled from hip to knee, his left abdominal area was torn open with his intestines nearly all torn out, his right hip, chest muscle and left shoulder were also missing. His right leg and face were the only parts of him untouched. A memorial for Lester and Fisher was erected in tribute to the lost boy and the bravery of Fisher.
But the Man-Eater wasn't done for the day, only thirty minutes after the attack on Lester and Fisher, 14-year-old Joseph Dunn of New York was blissfully unaware at the horror downstream until a man warned him, his brother and friend that the boys quickly started to exit the water but on the way out Joseph was bitten on the left leg by the shark but luckily for him, his brother and friend saved him after an intense tug of war battle with the shark. Amazingly, though most of the flesh was missing on his leg, no arteries were severed and he had no broken bones. Joseph was taken to Saint Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick, while he lost his leg he recovered from his wounds and was released on September 15th 1916 and became the only survivor of the attacks.
The attacks brought media attention and a shark panic. Charles Vansant's death was originally played down as a freak one off occurrence saying that the shark had been after the dog and had accidentally bitten Charles in the process and people were told there was no need to be fearful of the ocean. But after the second attack it couldn't be played down, fear swept everyone and New Jersey resort owners lost an estimated $250,000 ($5,900,000 today) in revenue and sunbathing declined by 75% in some areas. At press conferences experts claimed that a third run in with the shark was unlikely and that they were surprised it had bitten anyone in the first place. Only the one expert, John Treadwell Nichols, warned swimmers to stay close to shore and to stay in the netted areas installed after the first attack.
Shark sightings increased during this time along the Mid-Atlantic Coast and on July 8th armed motorboats patrolling the beach at Spring Creek chased away a creature thought to be a shark and a lifeguard claimed to have fought off a 12-foot-long shark with an oar. Many reported run ins with what they believed to be sharks as fear made every shadow in the water a potential threat.
Local New Jersey governments tried to make the beaches safer, not only to calm the shark terror sweeping the nation but to save the resorts from losing more money. The only beach left open had a steel wire mesh fence installed and armed patrols. Following the attacks at Matawan Creek, residents lined the creek with nets and dynamite to catch and kill the Man-Eater and Matawan Mayor Arris B. Henderson sent out wanted posters with a $100 ($2,300 today) reward to anyone who killed the shark. This caused a mass hunt of sharks in the area and ultimately no one caught anything that could be the Man-Eater.
After the second attack people wanted to know which type of shark was the culprit and if this was the work of one shark or multiple. Witnesses at Beach Haven stated the shark had been 9-feet-long. On July 14th, Harlem taxidermist and Barnum and Bailey lion tamer Micheal Schleisser caught a 7.5-foot-long, 325 pound shark while fishing in Raritan Bay, which is only a few miles from the mouth of Matawan Creek. The shark nearly sank Schleisser's boat before he managed to kill it with a broken oar. When he opened the sharks stomach he removed what he described as "suspicious fleshy material and bones" that took up "about two thirds of a milk crate" and "together weighed fifteen pounds.". Experts identified the shark as a young Great White and the contents of the stomach as human. Schleisser then mounted the shark and displayed it in the window of a Manhattan shop on Broadway but it was later lost, the only surviving photo of it appeared in the Bronx Home News (This can be viewed at the bottom of this page).
After no more attacks happened after the capture of the young Great White it was declared that the Great White was the "Jersey Man-Eater". Not everyone was satisfied with this and began to offer alternatives, one was that the culprit of the attacks wasn't a shark at all and was in fact a sea turtle. Another theory blamed the shark infestations on German U-Boats, who left sharks with a taste for humans after the war and sharks followed liners to the coast expecting bodies after becoming accustomed to the victims of sea battles.
It wasn't until 2002 that National Geographic reported that the young Great White may not have been the culprit after all and that the true Matawan Man-Eater may have been a Bull shark. Bull sharks are the only breed to be able to survive in both fresh and salt waters, a Great White would not have been able to enter the creek. Bull sharks are also extremely aggressive and territorial species and is more likely to be found in New Jersey waters than Great Whites. In 2011, a further study was done for the Smithsonian Channel that looked at different perspectives and found that conditions at the time would have made the water different so a Great White could have hypothetically made it into the creek as the salt in the water had risen by more than double and Schleisser's Great White was caught in an unusual location as it was close to the creek instead of further out in the ocean but other evidence such as the injury to Joseph Dunn suggested the bite was done by a Bull shark rather than a Great White, leading to a belief that the attacks were the work of more than one shark. The increased presence of humans in the ocean was a factor in the attacks as more people looked to aquatic activities and with the increased sightings in 1916 of sharks in the Mid-Atlantic it seemed it was only a matter of time before human and shark would collide. Sadly, as all the evidence in these attacks has been lost we can only hypothesise about the attacks.
Before 1916, the idea of a shark attacking humans was unheard of. An accidental bite was one thing but an unprovoked attack was something unheard of. The attacks forced scientists to reevaluate their thoughts that sharks were harmless and powerless creatures but it sadly also lead the demonising of sharks, many now viewed sharks as cold blooded, ruthless killers.
In 1974, Peter Benchley published the infamous Jaws novel, it features a giant Great White that terrorises the fictional Long Island town of Amity, it follows Chief Martin Brody, biologist Matt Hooper and fisherman Quint in their hunt to rid Amity of the shark after it kills four people. The book was then famously made into a film in 1975 by Stephen Spielberg, it then reignited the fear of sharks for a new generation. Benchley has stated that he regrets writing Jaws as sharks are now seen as villains, especially the Great White and he has devoted his life to shark preservation. The 1916 attacks caused a mass hunting of sharks that hugely effected their population and they are now a protected species.
The attacks of 1916 are a terrible tragedy and has lead to a mass fear of sharks. The likelihood of being attacked by shark is extremely slim and if someone is attacked unprovoked it is a case of terrible luck not a vengeful shark with a lust for human flesh, most incidents are investigation bites as humans are foreign things in the ocean, some are people are too close to nurseries and others are mistaken identity. Sharks are magnificent creatures that play a huge part in maintaining our oceans, we are simply guests in their domain. If you enter the ocean the risk of sharks is one you take, we can only hope that people learn more about these wonderful creatures and come to understand that they aren't the bad guys.
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