True Crime Campfire - Out of Your Depth: The Grisly Jersey Shore Shark Attacks of 1916

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

When you were a kid, were you ever scared to go in the swimming pool in case you might get eaten by a shark? Or just get in the bathtub? Hell, one time I even managed to freak myself out just from laying on a waterbed. This is mainly thanks to Steven Spielberg and a 25-foot mechanical shark called Bruce, but “Jaws” wasn’t made in a vacuum. Shark attacks are, thankfully, very rare, but over a century ago there were a series of attacks so shocking and so close together that they cemented the shark as a figure of sharp-toothed horror in the American psyche. The serial killer of the sea, you might say. Basically what we’re sayin’ here folks, is it’s SHARK WEEK on True Crime Campfire. Join us for the terrifying true story of the deadly 1916 shark attacks that inspired the movie "Jaws." This one's not for the faint of heart! Sources:Close to Shore by Michael CapuzzoNY Times Archives: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1916/07/07/100214613.pdfNational Geographic Archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20150703224631/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150702-shark-attack-jersey-shore-1916-great-white/Pittsburgh Press: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-pittsburgh-press/106419794/Matawan Historical Society: https://matawanhistoricalsociety.org/1916-shark-attack/Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/25/us-shark-mania-began-with-this-attack-more-than-century-ago/https://www.medievalists.net/2014/09/ten-strange-medieval-ideas-animals/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. When you were a kid, were you ever scared to go in the swimming pool in case you might get eaten by a shark? Or just get in the bathtub? Hell, one time I had a... even managed to freak myself out just from laying on a waterbed. This is mainly thanks to Stephen Spielberg and a 25-foot mechanical shark called Bruce,

but Jaws wasn't made in a vacuum. Shark attacks are thankfully very rare, but over a century ago, there was a series of attacks so shocking and so close together that they cemented the shark as a figure of sharp-toothed horror in the American psyche, the serial killer of the sea, you might say. Basically, what we're saying here, folks, is it's shark. week on True Crime Camp Fire. This is Out of Your Depth, the story of the 1916 New Jersey shark attacks. The shark swam slowly through the warm, shallow waters, a panoply of information falling into its senses.

Senses sharpened over hundreds of millions of years of evolution. to an exquisite point. It could feel the pressure waves through the water of clumsy splashing at the surface. It could taste a new creature, strange but similar enough to the shark's ideal prey of seals and dolphins to be enticing. A mammal. As it got closer, it could sense the electrical impulses from moving muscles and could see the exciting bright flashes of hands and feet hitting the water. Sharks are usually cautious hunters, but this one was hungry. hungry, hungry enough to take a risk. July 1st, 1916, Philadelphia.

Charles Van Sant was 25 years old, but still the boy to his father. Eugene Van Sant was a successful, respected Philadelphia doctor, and very much the stern Victorian patriarch who wanted his life and his family to be calm and orderly. This was a time of bewilderingly fast changes, and Dr. Van Zant had mixed feelings on all of it. The new electric refrigerator, stove, and toaster in the kitchen, he was all four. His daughter marching with the suffragettes in downtown Philly for the right to vote, not so much. Yeah, I imagine. Dr. Van Sant had worried about the boy Charles.

Like many of his generation, he was concerned about his son's masculinity, which is one of those problems the Victorians largely just invented for themselves. Masculinity to them pretty much just meant conformity. And the problem was the universal one of parents discovering their kids aren't just going to be perfect little clones of themselves. Charles wasn't much like his stern, walrus-mustached father. He was thin and witty and a member of the French and drama clubs at school. But four years at Penn had filled Charles out a little, more to his father's satisfaction anyway.

Okay, he'd worked on the humor magazine and the literary journal, but he also played baseball and soccer and sailed and got into fights and drank till he puked. You know, all the important parts of a university education. He'd gotten a job as a stockbroker, with a little help from his influential dad, and had a special girl he was planning to marry the next year and get a house of his own. So there was a touch of melancholy as the family, or rather their servants, crammed the Packard automobile with luggage for the trip to Broad Street Station and the train to the resort town of Beach Haven on the Jersey Shore.

This was probably the last time they'd make this annual summer trip as one household. Now, thanks to MTV, the name Jersey Shore might conjure up some very specific images, but, you know, it's not all snooky in the situation, right? Basically, the entire Atlantic facing coast of the state, 130 miles worth, is all beach. These days, everything that isn't beach is mostly one long grid of vacation houses and shops and hotels, and in 1916, that reshaping of the coast was already underway. The Jersey Shore was booming, with new rail,

connections bringing thousands of tourists from the big cities to enjoy the sand and sea and fresh air. This was especially true in 1916, with the East Coast gripped by a heat wave and an epidemic of polio, spreading from New York to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Fresh sea air was considered both a treatment and a preventative for the disease. Swimming in the ocean was something that was still somewhat morally dubious to people of Dr. Van Zanz's generation. I mean, you know, it's a pleasurable physical sensation, so of course it's got to be wrong. Good heavens.

Yeah, anything that gives you a little tingle has to be the work of the devil. Until recently, it hadn't been unusual for beaches to be strictly segregated by gender. But the younger people frolicked in the surf with scandalous abandon. Odds bodkins,

you could sometimes see a woman's knees. Filthy and disgusting. Which is not to say that was, you know, anything goes on the sands. Women's swimsuits at the time were usually a dress worn over trunks or pantaloons, both only recently allowed to rise above the knee. Australian swimming star Annette Kellerman had recently been arrested in Boston for swimming in a tight one-piece bathing suit that stopped halfway down her thighs, that absolute whore. Actually, I mean, that's like such a wild story, but there is some indication that her, her, her,

rest might have been a publicity stunt that she came up with herself, which I think is hilarious if true. But, you know, nevertheless, it did reflect the morals of the time. I'm choosing to believe that theory lest I have a rage stroke. Oh, my God. It's a much better story. You see somebody's knees. God, not let a little on a woman's knees. Goey. First, I wanted the right to vote, and now they're just flashing their joints everywhere, you know? Eich. Police actually patrolled the beaches of the Jersey Shore with tape measures, making sure that neither trunks nor skirts were too short. Oh, my God.

You know, it's the ankle police. And the weenie police, I guess. Like, what a weird-ass job? Oh, what do I do? I walk the beach and measure people's swimsuits. Yeah, we call it the groin to hemline ratio. Right. It's very important work.

You know, my dad and my dad's dad, we're all in the measuring racket. Acab includes the weenie police. Actually, weenie police is the name of my new folk punk band, so calling dibs. I'm sure these guys had way too much fun at their jobs. And side note, there was this Harvard professor named, of course, Dudley Sargent, the most Harvard professor name of all time. who apparently liked to whip out his tape measure, dirty minds, and figure out which ladies were closest to perfection. His standard was the Venus de Milo,

and after he measured thousands of women, he finally declared he found his Venus. It was Annette Kellerman, who was 37 years younger than him, by the way. Ew. Why she let him measure her, I have no idea. She probably just thought it was funny. Yeah, based on the small amount we know about Annette so far, right? It's just so bizarre. And I'm assuming this was just a weird hobby for our boy and not, you know, like an actual research project that he had to get funding for.

Yeah, I don't think the IRB would approve that. It doesn't exactly fit the human subjects might be harmed category, but human subjects definitely might be skeved out. These modesty standards were mostly for women, of course, but men caught a little bit of shit sometimes, too. It was scandalous for a man to show his bare chest. So male swimsuits were usually one-pieces, kind of similar to the one that had gotten in at Kellerman arrested. It's an example of how standards of modesty change. These swimsuits hid the forbidden pecks, but more often than not clearly outlined the dick and balls, which apparently the early 20th century had no problem at all with.

Oh, yeah, I was actually looking at some old pictures, and yeah, it and them were on full display in these outfits. Moose knuckles, as far as the eye can see. Charles Van Sant in the black swimsuit played on the beach with a dog, a Chesapeake Bay retriever that had befriended him immediately. It was the early evening on July 1st, the end of a beautiful warm day. Most swimmers had already come out of the water, but there was still a few there, although none as adventurous as Charles. He intended to get in the water and swim straight out as far as he could go. This was a popular way for athletic young guys to show off at the time, and as Charles strode out into the surf, he knew plenty of people on the beach

and the boardwalk would have their eyes on him. His parents and two sisters watched from the boardwalk, and if Charles was lucky, a couple of the cute iris waitresses that the hotel brought down from Boston every summer would be checking him out too, because, you know, guys don't show off for nothing. As he dove into the crystal clear water and started out in a strong breaststroke, Charles heard splashing behind him and glanced back to see his new doggy friend swimming after him. When Charles went beyond the farthest swimmer and kept on going, there was a cheer from the shore for his daring. The dog kept on paddling after him, too, falling quickly behind as Charles went out into the ocean alone. There are a lot of factors that go into how likely you are to be attacked by a shark, and here are three that made it more likely, about which nobody in 1916 had a clue.

One is go swimming with a dog. the choppy way a dog swims sends signals of an animal thoroughly out of its element and having an easy target in the water excites the shark. Another is to be out on the water alone, which makes sense. I mean, most predators like to be as sure of a kill as possible and with as little danger to themselves as possible, and going after a solitary target makes that more likely. And a third factor is to be dark, whether due to skin tone or a dark swimsuit.

It just makes you more visible from below against the bright sky, and more similar in appearance to a seal or a sea otter, which are two of a shark's favorite sneckos. So Charles and his dog buddy are splashing around, and all of a sudden, the dog stopped on a dime, turned around and headed back to shore, either tired out or more likely alerted to trouble by doggy intuition. Charles turned and treaded water,

calling out to the dog to come back, but he paddled on, all the way back to shore, where he clambered back onto the beach and shook himself dry. Charles started swimming into shore, too, in a strong crawl, his arms and legs thrashing the water. On the beach, someone saw a dark fin break the water some way behind him, moving straight towards him. Watch out, the man called, and soon others joined in. Look out, look out. But Charles, his head going into the water at every stroke, couldn't hear them. He was in just three and a half feet of clear water, his shadow stark on the pale sand below.

Did he see just for an instant a second huge shadow rushing up behind him and have a brief, terrifying realization of what was about to happen? The shark, likely a juvenile Great White, lunged forward, huge jaws opening wide and breaking the surface, then smashing closed around Charles' left leg just below the knee, 50 razor-sharp teeth tearing through the flesh and gripping hard. Charles screamed and struggled to free himself, barely aware of what was happening.

Some people on the beach thought he was just joking around until they saw the blood spreading out through the water. The people on the boardwalk, including Charles' family, could see more clearly what was happening, even if they had no idea what might be attacking him. After a few moments of shock, men started racing into the water. A lifeguard named Alexander Ott dove in and swam straight out toward the bloody water where Charles was still battling with his attacker,

as it shook him from side to side. Campers, would you dive into the ocean to try and save a stranger being torn apart by a massive shark? That takes a major wavos, man. Alexander Ott, balls of solid steel. Then, finally, the shark let Charles go and disappeared into the bloody water. This was a hunting technique that's since been observed in other great whites. Take one huge, mortally wounding bite, then back off and wait for the prey to bleed to death. Charles would have died sooner than that.

As Ott reached him, Charles, in shock and terribly wounded, was struggling to stay above the bloody water. Ought put his arms under Charles's and started heading back to shore, but the shark, sensing its prey being taken away, charged in again and locked its terrible mouth onto Charles's thigh. Alexander Ott guessed it was at least ten feet long. It tried to pull Charles out of his arms and was much too strong for Ot alone. But other men had joined him now, gripping each other and forming a chain all the way back to shore. The humans now had the advantage in this horrific tug-of-war and slowly pulled Charles and the thrashing shark to the beach. It seemed for just a moment that the shark would never let go, that they'd have to pull it all the way up onto the beach.

But when the water was shallow enough that its belly started scraping the sand, it finally let go of Charles and thrashed its way around to disappear back into the ocean. men and women rushed towards Charles as he lay still conscious on the beach. His sister Louise nearly passed out at the sight of him. His left leg had been nearly torn off, she said later. Their father, the doctor, knelt down by Charles and took his hand. Dr. Van Zant was almost in a panic, unsure what to do. Charles's lower leg was a gruesome mess torn to pieces by the shark's teeth, and the great bite wound on his thigh was awful.

blood pumped out shockingly fast. Charles was pale, his pulse getting weaker and weaker as he fell toward unconsciousness. Alexander Ott tore some cloth from a dress and tied a tourniquet around Charles's thigh, but it barely seemed to slow down the bleeding. There were two other doctors on the beach who hurried over to consult with Van Zent, and together they determined Charles probably wouldn't survive a bumpy automobile journey to the nearest hospital, which was 30 miles away. So they carried him to the hotel, where a door was taken off its hinges and laid between two desks to use as an operating table.

The doctors thought amputation of Charles' leg was their best option, but they had to stop the bleeding first, and it just would not stop. The femoral artery on his left leg had been bitten through. One hour, after he'd first gone into the water for his evening swim, Charles Van Zant died. It was the first death in U.S. history to be officially. recorded as caused by a shark bite. Wow. Shock ran through Beach Haven, and the number of people claiming to have been on the beach and seen the attack rose by the hour. Those who actually had been on the beach had no doubt about what had killed Charles Van Sant. They'd almost had to pull the damn thing onto land before I let go of the poor guy. But others were dubious. Reporters arrived

from the Philadelphia newspapers and know-it-all fishermen told them it probably hadn't been a shark at all. Sharks were weak, timid creatures, they said. It was probably a giant tuna, or more likely a sea turtle. Reporters are no, Charles' death didn't make big news. Local officials at Beach Haven didn't send any reports of the attack to other beachside communities. The 4th of July was just three days away, after all, and these places lived and died on the tourist dollar. There was no radio and no TV. News spread either through papers or by word of mouth. Damn it, people, this is exactly what happened in Jaws, a movie which hadn't been made yet, but damn it! Close the beaches, Mayor, whatever your name is, you slimy shit.

Charles's death didn't make the papers until two days later, and even then it was just a few lines of copy, and nowhere near the front page. The tiny headline in the New York Times on the bottom of the last page was, dies after attack by fish. Words spread up and down the Jersey Shore, though it caused no more than brief nervousness, some alarm when tourists spotted the fin of porpoises cruising along the beach. The skepticism of the locals soon put the tourist's minds at ease. A lot of people doubted that Charles Van Sant had died or had even existed. The whole thing was made up just to sell papers.

And even if he had died, he'd most likely drowned and people just misunderstood what had happened. This sounded believable. A lot of people drowned on the Jersey shore. Back then, unless you happened to grow up right beside a body of water, chances were you'd never learned how to swim. That was certainly true for most of the people waiting into the surf at the shore. And if a freak current pulled them under the surface or out from the beach, they could be in a lot of trouble. With all this poo-pooing of what happened down at Beach Haven, by July 6th, five days after the attack, the beaches along the Jersey Shore were as crowded as ever.

45 miles north of Beach Haven, the scene at the resort town of Spring Lake was a carbon copy of the day Charles Van Zand had died. right down to a young man wanting to show off by swimming far out to sea. 19-year-old Robert Dowling told everybody he was going to swim four miles straight out and then come back, a distance that would take him clear over the horizon. This was exciting. Young Dowling was well known, having made headlines the previous summer for swimming the whole 35 miles around Manhattan Island. Another swimmer, Leonard Hill, planned to swim out a quarter mile, then turned south and swim five miles down the coast.

people on the beach watched both men swim out separately, distant figures out alone on the vast ocean, or alone on the surface at least. There was a predator in the water with them, one with such astonishingly acute senses that it was certainly aware of two sizable mammals splashing along the surface. Nevertheless, both Dowling and Hill successfully returned from their long swims to lots of applause and cheers. By the end of the day, both would be swearing to never go in the ocean again. Charles Bruder was 28 and in charge of all the bell staff at the Shishi, Essex, and Sussex Hotel. Formerly in the Swiss Army, he was a popular, energetic guy, both in the hotel and his adopted hometown. He was also a distant swimmer, and he had a bit of an ego. He was the

reigning beach hero of Spring Lake, and all the talk of what Dowling and Hill had done that morning had gotten him all fired up and competitive. So when he had a break from work in the late afternoon, he decided to go for a swim. There wasn't time to go out as far as Robert Dowling had, but he planned to swim much harder and faster. He was well known on the beach, and a crowd gathered to cheer him on as he shot out into the ocean, arms thrashing into the water. He wasn't worried at all about sharks. He told the bellhops he used to swim with him all the time out in California, and they were scared of him. Which was probably true. I mean, most sharks are kind of nervous about humans in the water, but there are sharks and then there are sharks, and this was like

saying you wouldn't be scared of a wolf because you get along so well with your neighbor's little Jack Russell Terrier. Humans have a tendency to like wubify wild animals and forget they're, you know, wild. I mean, myself included. Like I see a cute picture of like a grizzly bear and I think, if not friend, why friend shaped? But then I remember that history is filled with the corpses of Darwin Award winners who thought that Lion King was a documentary and got a little too close to an apex predator.

I mean, sharks do usually leave human beings alone until one doesn't. Yeah. Now, one of the reasons the Jersey shore is so good for beachgoers is that the shore slopes gently down into the water. Soon, Charles Bruder was 400 yards out to sea, but the water was still only 10 feet deep. That, unfortunately, for Bruder, was deep enough for a great white shark to use an attack commonly used on seals, a fast charge from below, smashing into the prey with terrible blunt force. The water wasn't deep enough for the shark to move fast enough to fully breach from the water, as Great Whites sometimes do, but watchers from the beach saw a great big plume of water

shoot up from where Charles Bruder had been just a moment before. A few seconds later, a woman on the beach called out, The man in the red canoe is upset. What she thought was a capsized red canoe was actually Charles's bright red blood. in the water. Two lifeguards rushed out in a rescue rowboat. When they got to the bloody water, they saw Charles Bruder being yanked and pushed around like a rag doll in the water. The shark would rush in to bite him, then dart away and come back. As the lifeguards got closer, the shark pulled Bruder completely under the water. But a moment later, he struggled to the surface and grabbed

an oar held out to him. A shark bit me, he told them. The lifeguards hauled him up into the boat. It was easier than they'd expected it to be, and when Bruder was up, they saw why. Both of his legs were almost gone below the knees, which, my God, like, I think I would pass out immediately if I saw that, but they were great. They ripped up a shirt and tied tourniquets around Bruder's thighs as best they could. And he was still conscious as the lifeguards rode as hard as they could for sure. The next day, the Pittsburgh Press published what he told them as they rode, although I suspect that an editor must have punched up the dialogue a little bit before publication. You tell me if you think this guy actually said this as he was laying in the boat with both his legs off. He was a big gray fellow and rough

his sandpaper. I didn't see him until after he struck me the first time. I thought he'd gone on, but he only turned, came back and snipped my left leg off just below the knee. He yanked me clear under before he let me go. I had hardly reached the surface when he came back at me again. That time he bit me here on the side and shook me like a terrier shakes a rat. But he let me go while I was calling, then suddenly struck at me again, and that time took off the other leg. He's a big fellow and awfully hungry. How is this man conscious enough to be this eloquent? I mean, if they got anything out of me at that point and just be, uh-huh.

That would be the poll quote. Yeah, just like I love the audacity of this reporter to be like, yes, he gave me a five-paragraph essay on exactly what happened to him. What do you mean? I'm sorry, but like sniffed my leg off. No one says that when they're rapidly losing blood. I'm sorry. That's crazy. Yeah, he's supposed to be laying in the bottom of the canoe saying all this.

Filling with blood. The canoes filling with blood. He's, oh my God. Good old reporters, you know. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right? Exactly. By the time the boat reached the beach, Charles Bruder had lost consciousness. Shortly afterwards, the switchboard operators,

at the Essex and Sussex Hotel were calling other big hotels up and down the coast. Within a half hour of the attack, lifeguards all along the Jersey shore were frantically waving all the swimmers in from the water, and the East Coast had a full-on shark panic on its hands. By the time a hotel doctor hurried down to Charles Bruder, he was dead. His left leg had been bitten off above the knee, his right from just below it. A fist-sized bite had been taken from his side. These are things the human body just can't survive. Even if Charles Bruder had been attacked in 2024 and immediately received,

the best 21st century medical care possible, he still would have been dead within minutes. Yeah. The official report on his death was thorough and clearly identified a shark as his killer, but the skeptical old fishermen of the East Coast still had their doubts. It was a swordfish. It was a giant mackerel. It was, yet again, a sea turtle. What the hell? You guys, was there like a rash of sea turtle attacks in the early 20th century that we don't know about? Because, like, these fishermen in New Jersey seemed completely convinced that sea turtles were like the Ted Bundys of the sea. Great Atouin would never.

I just, maybe it's because they're so big that they just assume that they'll take a bite out of somebody or they're confusing with. You seem so sweet and gentle. I can't imagine. I don't think I've ever heard of a sea turtle biting a human, like, at least without cause. The fishermen weren't the only. one's casting doubt on the shark attack. Scientists at the Natural History Museum got in on the eye-rolling too,

declaring with total confidence that shark's jaws just weren't strong enough to hurt a human. They definitely couldn't bite through bone. The attacker had to be an orca, they said. That's more believable than a shark, the sea turtle, but... Yeah. I have to say, this straight up feels like

every biologist and fishermen learned their craft from one of those medieval Biciaries. Like, here's an excerpt from one. There is an animal called the beaver, which is quite tame, whose testicles are quite excellent as medicine. When it realizes that hunters are pursuing it, it bites off its testicles and throws them down in front of the hunters, and thus takes flight and escapes. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Yeah. I don't think so. I'm pretty sure that's not true. I don't know much about beavers. But I'm pretty sure that's false. And like, does that sound like somebody who's actually ever seen a beaver or any animal, for that matter? Wait a second. Are they supposed to be like exploding testicles?

No, I think it's like, hey, you want to like smoke bombs. Smoke bomb. Like ninja. That's a crazy. I think I've ever heard. Oh, my God. If you ever want to go on a wild trip, go look up how. medieval writers wrote about animals because it is pretty crazy and it's honestly I wish it

was testicle smoke bombs I think it was like hey you want my testicles here have them like they're like little gecko it's like a gecko yeah exactly jinks okay anyway those scientists and fishermen were idiots Two fatal shark attacks in one week was a story. Bruder's death was front-page news in the New York Times and other papers. The next morning in Spring Lake, no one was in the water. Plenty of people were on it, though. A fleet of small boats carrying locals armed with rifles and harpoons,

pouring animal blood in the water and ready to take vengeance on any shark they could find. One big shark was spotted close to the beach and cries of alarm went up, followed by the crack of rifle fire as hunters took pot shots at the crime. creature. They couldn't hurt it much, but the shark was freaked out enough that it turned tail and fled out to sea. Sea monsters and gunfire, as metal as that sounds, weren't really what the tourists had come to the shore for, so they checked out of the hotels and droves. Yeah, you know, they want to hit the club. You know, they want to hang out with Snooky, do a little GTL. And by GTL, I of course mean gem tan and laundry, not great white tearing your leg off.

Man, yeah, you know, probably not. I do wish that they had come up with Great White tasting your leg or something. Yeah, no, Jim Tan & Laundry. For the show, but Jim Tan Laundry is acceptable, I suppose. Imagine the situation going up against a great way show. My money's on the shark every time. Although sharks don't have abs, so maybe. That's true.

and the shark might be so befuddled by the spray tan and the like reek of ax body spray that it just backs off oh and then all the gel in his hair jesus oh yeah that can't smell good but some people did stay and just a couple of days later there were still plenty of people in the water at the asbury park beach a few miles north of spring lake the beaches were now mostly shielded from the by wire fishing netting that went from the bottom of the sea to the high tide mark, but the work hadn't been finished yet, and one stretch of the beach was still open to the sea. This was protected by a lifeguard and a rowboat,

supposedly armed with a rifle and an axe, except Ben Everingham was one of the shark-attack skeptics who thought it was probably just a big mackerel, so he hadn't bothered to bring any weapons with him, which he regretted when he glanced out toward the sea and saw a gray fin cutting the surface of the water and heading straight for him. It was a big shark, maybe eight feet long, right at the surface, and it looked like it was planning on rammon right into Ben's little rowboat.

As the shark got close, Ben stood up and whacked at it with an oar, causing the shark to turn away from him. He hit it again, and the shark fled back out to sea. People on the beach had no idea what Ben Everingham was doing, thrashing at the sea with an oar. That is, until he rode in hellbent for leather, screaming. shark. Everyone in the water ran out in a panic, and Asbury Park closed all its beaches except for the one that was fully enclosed by wire. Nobody wanted to go into the water there either, though. Shark fear was rampant now, all along the coast. One place it wasn't, though, was the village of Madawan. Sure, people there were fascinated and shocked by the bloody tales from the Jersey shore,

who wouldn't be. But Madawan wasn't a beach resort or any other kind of coastal town. It was a couple a mile's inland, connected to the sea by the calm waters of Madawan Creek. Goods from farms and villages all around came to Madawan to be shipped downstream. It was a farming town more than anything, a neat, quiet little place of 2,000 people where everybody knew everybody. To worry about a shark attack here would be absurd. Just back from Main Street was a swimming hole on the creek, a place that had been popular for generations, especially with kids. In these days of lax or absent, child labor laws, most of the local boys spent the summers working, and there was an old tradition among their employers that they'd be given a few minutes off in the afternoon to go

cool off in the swimming hole. How generous, right? On July 11th, a bunch of boys, mostly ages 12 to 14, ran down to the swimming hole, laughing and shoving each other as they went. They stripped off on the pier and jumped into the water, which was deeper and darker than usual thanks to the rain over the weekend. It was a beautiful place, trees all around, the sun shining on the water that stretched 30 feet from the pier.

Fourteen-year-old Rennie Carter didn't have long to enjoy it, though. Just moments after he jumped off the pier, he screamed. Something huge and dark in the water had charged right by him, bumping into his chest with skin like sandpaper, so rough that Rennie started to bleed.

He scrambled desperately for the muddy shore the other boys hurrying after him. They didn't know what had happened, but something had freaked their buddy out. When they were all on the shore, Rennie, his chest bleeding, tried to tell him what had happened. The other boys thought he'd most likely cut himself on a branch. As he scrambled up the bank to go and get bandaged, Rennie told his friends to stay out of the water. There was something dangerous in there. They didn't believe him.

Why would they? As soon as he was gone, they were back in the water, splashing and joking around, and they were fine. For that day, at least. The next morning, Thomas Cottrell went out for his daily walk. He was 58 years old, a retired sea captain, and a gregarious guy known for jokes and tall tales of the sea. I bet he'd sung the odd sea chantee in his time. He lived in Keyport, at the mouth of Matawan Creek, and his walks usually took him to the water. Creek would be called a river in most places, usually around 50 feet wide, but swelling and shrinking

with the tide. Cattrell made a point of going to the creek today. Rennie Carter was related to him, if distantly, and he'd heard about some fish biting or scratching the boy the day before. He was curious about what, if anything, could have done that, so he kept an eye on the muddy waters in case he spotted something. And as he crossed the new bridge over the creek, he couldn't believe what he saw.

A dark dorsal fin moved slowly up the creek. As it neared and then passed directly under the bridge, Captain Cotrell got a look at the shark. a big one, maybe nine feet long. Kattrell had spent most of his life at sea and knew he was looking at a dangerous, potentially deadly animal, and he'd read all about the attacks on the Jersey shore. Was this the same shark? Seeing it in the creek was astonishing.

He'd been born in Madawan, and had always lived within a couple of miles of the creek, and he'd never heard of such a thing. It was bizarre, but not impossible. One species of shark, the bull shark, is both a large and aggressive hunter, growing to about eight feet long and able to survive in fresh water as well as the sea. A bull shark was once caught in the Mississippi in Alton, Illinois, just north of St. Louis. But as we'll see later, this was probably a great white that had entered the mouth of the creek by mistake somehow and was now confused. The creek was strongly tidal, the water salty enough for the shark to survive in for a while.

Captain Cottrell knew that kids liked to swim in the creek on summer days. He'd done the same in his own youth. He hurried toward town, desperately hoping he'd get there before the shark, and hurrying wasn't good for him. Captain Contrell had a heart condition, and by the time he reached Matawan, he was red-faced and gasping for breath. He burst into John Mulsov's barbershop, red-faced and wide-eyed. In small towns, people often had two jobs, and Mulsov was also the local constable. Gatrell gasped out his story, that he'd seen a big shark in the creek, swimming toward town. After a second, the constable just burst out laughing, and so did the other men in the barbershop.

His face flushing even redder, Catrell went back onto Main Street, telling his story to everyone he saw, and only being met with disbelief and laughter. He'd have to take care of things himself. God, this poor guy, I feel so bad for him, and I don't know why people didn't take him more seriously knowing that he's like a retired sea captain. That's just so weird. But then he was also known for joking around a lot. So maybe they just thought he was doing a bit.

Yeah, the soothsayer of men. Matawan, right? Like, this is crazy. Yeah. At a certain point, like, it's not a joke anymore, right? Oh, it's got awful. This is one of the worst parts of it for me is that this poor dude tried to warn these people. Oh, Lord. The captain had a little motorboat docked at Matawan, and soon he was chugging slowly up and down the creek, on the lookout for Finns breaking the surface and calling out warnings to anyone he saw on the shore. By sheer bad luck, he missed a group of six boys hurrying down to the swimming hole on a break from work. They included Russell and Lester

still well, 16 and 11 years old, on a break from the basket factory. Their dad told Russell to stay near the dock and watch out for Lester, who was a smart kid, but fragile and skinny, and had epileptic seizures sometimes. There were some of the same boys who'd been there the day before, although not Rennie, who'd never go into the creek again. They all thought Rennie was crazy, which, okay, I think it's important to establish in a friend group that there are certain things you'll never joke about. For me, it's being turned into a van, vampire, werewolf, finding a portal to a fantasy universe, and time travel. I guess maybe I should add shark attacks to the list if all of my friends are going to be

assholes about it. You've never shared this list with me before. Oh, well. Good to know. I will never joke about these things. All righty. If I say, some dude bit me last night and I now crave the taste of blood. All right.

You know. It's for real. No, I know we need to get you some help, but okay. Time for a little vacation, Katie. Exactly. The boys stripped off and started diving in, one after the other, then swimming out to the middle of the creek and coming back to run along the dock and dive in again. After a few turns of this, Lester still well stopped before getting out of the water.

Watch me float, fellas, he said, and floated on his back in the water. This was an achievement. Lester was so skinny that he usually couldn't manage to do it. Then suddenly, a huge shape rushed through the water towards Lester, rolling just before it hit so the boys could see its white belly and the jagged teeth and its huge open mouth. Lester screamed as the shark rushed up out of the water and grabbed his arm. The shark wrenched its head from side to side. One of the boys later said Lester was, quote, being shaken like a cat shakes a mouse. Then the shark pulled Lester down under the water, and red blossomed out all around them.

The poor kid burst free for a moment, screaming and waving his arms. Then the shark pulled him under again, leaving only the bloody water. The five other boys scrambled out of the water and up the muddy bank to Main Street, running naked and terrified down the street, screaming that a shark had gotten Lester still well. After Captain Cottrell's warning earlier, people started to be alarmed, although most thought that either the boys were playing a prank or that Lesser had drowned. Maybe he'd had a seizure in the water, and his convulsions had panicked the boys into thinking he'd been attacked. A crowd quickly headed down to the creek to rescue the boy if they could, or at least pull the body from the water.

Stanley Fisher, a tailor renowned as the strongest man in town, took charge. He and his friend George Burlew changed into their swimsuits, then went out in a rowboat and strung chicken wire across the creek downstream from where the boys had been swimming. so the current couldn't take Lester's body away. Then Stanley and George dove into the muddy water to try and find Lester's body, ignoring warnings about a shark from the crowd on the riverbank. The idea was ridiculous. They swam out to the middle of the creek where it was deepest,

about 17 feet, and dove down again and again to blindly feel in the muddy bottom, coming up gasping for air. After half an hour with no success, they decided the best option was to wait till low tide made it easier to find the body, and started swimming back to shore. On an impulse, Stanley Fisher took one last dive down into the middle of the creek. George was nearly back at the bank when Stanley surfaced and cried out,

I've got it! People on the riverbank cheered. A couple of men started rowing out to help Stanley with the body. Suddenly, the water around Stanley Fisher churned, and he screamed, He's got me! The people on the shore couldn't see the shark clearly, but they could see its tail thrashing the water as it attacked Stanley, and they knew it was a big one. Stanley fought, punching and kicking the shark, but it pulled him under, the water-staining red. But somehow Stanley broke free and started swimming to shore, where onlookers could see he'd managed to keep hold of Lester Stillwell's mangled body.

He was almost at the shore when he cried out again and was pulled under, dropping Lester's body. The shark grabbed the dead boy and vanished into the murky water. Stanley made it to the surface again and tried to climb out onto the bank. People cried out in horror as he tried to stand. A massive 18-inch bite had been taken out of his right thigh, almost from his hip to his knee. I guess because of the adrenaline, Stanley had no idea he'd been so badly hurt. He looked down at his leg, said, oh my God, and collapsed into the water. The people there tied a rope tourniquet around Stanley's thigh and others ran in to get Dr. Reynolds from town.

The doctor patched up the bite as best he could, but could see that the femoral artery had been completely severed. He had people put together a stretcher from planks and carry Stanley up to the train station to wait for the train to the nearest hospital at Long Beach, 10 miles away. Stanley remained conscious, with Dr. Reynolds right beside him for the whole journey, all the way to the operating table. He died of blood loss and hemorrhagic shock after five minutes of surgery. Half an hour after Stanley Fisher had been attacked, and three-quarters of a mile downstream from Madawan, Joseph and Michael Dunn, 12 and 14 years of age, wanted to cool off from the hot summer day. Captain Cottrell was still motoring up and down the creek, warning anybody he saw, and had been joined by several other small boats, but none of them had happened by.

The boys jumped into the water from the docks by the brickyard and swam out into the middle of the creek, completely oblivious to all the drama that had happened a short way upstream. They weren't oblivious for long. A man passing by saw the boys in the water and hurried out onto the dock to warn them. They swam back in, and Michael climbed up the ladder to the dock, Joseph, just a few feet behind. The shark slammed into him from nowhere, rough skin cutting his chest, and knocked him to one side. Then the shark spun around and grabbed Joseph's leg, trying to pull him out to deeper water, unable to use all of its great strength here in the shallows. Joseph could feel his leg

going down the shark's throat. A local attorney, Jacob Leffert, had joined Captain Cottrell in cruising the creek to warn people about sharks, and fortunately happened by just as the shark attack Joseph Dunn. He and Michael Dunn both jumped into the water and grabbed Joseph, trying to pull him to shore. The shark couldn't keep a grip on Joseph's leg, its teeth shredding the flesh as Lefferts and Michael pulled the boy free. It let him go, and thrashed back to deeper water. The wounds on Joseph's leg looked awful. Captain Cottrell arrived in his motorboat just after Lefferts and rushed Joseph up to the train station at Madawan.

Joseph's calf was torn to pieces, but somehow the shark's teeth had missed any major arteries. Joseph Dunn was rushed to hospital, and God knows what the surgeon's thought was going on, getting hit with two terrible shark injuries in quick succession. But unlike Stanley Fisher, they were able to see. save Joseph Dunn, and after a two-month stay in the hospital, he'd be released. The outraged people of Madawan wanted revenge. A wire barrier was put across the mouth of the creek to trap the shark, and all that night they threw dynamite into the creek and let rip with rifle fire at anything that moved. Branches, waves, shadows. In the morning, there was a hell

of a mess. No dead shark, and a hole chewed right through the wire barrier. There was also the body of Lester Stillwell, poor baby. A shoulder, and half of his torso eaten, a foot chewed off, and his stomach torn open. He was buried that same afternoon. The undertaker so alarmed at the boy's appearance, he wanted to hurry things along before anyone else could see him. It wasn't only the locals who were up in arms. The strangeness and savagery of these latest inland attacks stoked shark mania even higher. The shark attacks were as big a story as the war happening in Europe.

Crowds demanded that the governor do something. President Wilson held cabinet meetings on the shark menace, which resulted in a declaration of war on sharks. A coast guard cutter, the Mohawk, would sail up and down the Jersey coast, destroying all sharks. The plan was met with great approval before being quietly shelved as people realized sending a military vessel to try and blow sharks out of the water along 130 miles of coastline was, you know, stupid. The presidential response was downgraded to simple advice. Only swim at beaches protected by fences and stay in shallow water. If the government wasn't going to prosecute the war on sharks, the public would. Fleeves of ships put out in one of the largest mass hunts in world history,

hundreds of sharks, almost all of them completely harmless to humans and beneficial to their ecosystems, were caught and killed, then cut open upon the docks to see if any human remains were inside. If this ain't the most gie-ha, Yosemite Sam kind of bullshit response you can possibly imagine. Jesus Jones, war on sharks. Really? Like, God forbid, we just have people stay the hell out of the water for a while and, you know, try and figure out what's happening and why. Oh, no, just if it moves, shoot it. Ask questions later.

It's very manifest destiny, isn't it? Yeah. Like, okay, the water is your home. Mr. Shark, but we want to dip our piggies in. So our solution is gunpowder, bitch. We want to go piggy dipping. So we're just going to kill all of you. Piggy dipping at the piggy pond, okay?

Jeez. It's like, this is why no one can take Americans seriously. Yeah. Because like our first reaction to a few, and I'm not downplaying the tragedy, a few shark attacks was got to kill them all. Yeah. Got to drive them to extinction. That's crazy.

Captain Kirk. You know, we needed a Captain Picard response, and we got a Captain Kirk response. Exactly. Kill everything. And I'm not saying, like, I think the British would probably have a similar reaction. Like, we went over the bird thing, right? We did the birds. Oh, yeah.

We went over the birds. Mm-hmm. So, so we learned it from you. But, yeah, it is very, it's very American. We learned it from you, Dad. This is British and Americans. It's that muscle meme of. two muscle men holding hands.

Yeah, totally. And it's like being weird about animals. One of the people on the ocean that summer was kind of a badass, although you probably wouldn't think so to look at him. Michael Schleiser was a Serbian immigrant, a little short, skinny guy, with a handlebar mustache. You probably wouldn't look at him and think you were looking at a world-renowned big game hunter, but that's what he was.

He and his friend John set out in a little eight-foot motorboat. They weren't looking for sharks, just some nice fish for lunch and dinner. To start with, they put out a net behind the boat to catch some bait fish. And after an hour or so, they were on the other side of the bay, close to Madawan Creek. Suddenly, the boat came to a halt, throwing Schleiser and John forward. The engine cut out right away. As they got up, the two men realized something big was thrashing around in the net. Then it started trying to escape, pulling the boat backward against the waves,

so that water splashed into the boat, pulling. pulling so fast that the bow of the boat started lifting up, and John had to throw himself forward to keep them from tipping over. Then the shark turned and threw its head out of the water, slamming it down on the stern of the small boat, its huge mouth gnashing in the air. Its weight pushed the stern down, letting more water flood in. The shark kept trying to push itself farther forward, snapping its teeth as it tried to grab hold of Schleiser. The fisherman hadn't come prepared for fighting sharks. They had no gun or harpoon, just rods and hooks. but Michael Schleiser had a broken oar.

He picked it up off the dock earlier, thinking he could carve something cool with it later. Now he picked up his half-ore and belted the shark in the nose with it, then smacked it in the gills. This didn't do much more than piss the shark off, and it tried to grab his arm. But Schleiser dodged the bite and hit it again and again

on the nose and on the gills until finally the shark went limp and slid back into the net. Michael Schleiser had just beaten a great white shark to death, It was a juvenile, small for a great white, but that was very much a relative term. It was seven and a half feet long, with a sharp-toothed mouth you could fit your head into without touching the sides. Schleiser was a taxidermist as well as a hunter. He drove the shark back to Harlem in his open-top automobile, which must have been a sight to see,

and down to his basement taxidermy studio. He'd heard about the recent shark attacks, of course, and given how close he'd been to Madawan when he'd caught this beast, he wondered if it was the notorious man-eater. When he cut the thing open, in its stomach he found several pounds of flesh and some chewed-on bones. Michael Schleiser, Hunter, and taxidermist, knew bones, and he thought these looked human,

which was later confirmed by the Museum of Natural History and other experts. One bone came from a child's shin, presumably Lester Stillwell's. Another was a piece of a man's rib. That didn't match the Matawan attacks, but Charles Bruder had a chunk bitten out of his side that matched. So there was every reason to think that Michael Schleiser had

caught the shark responsible for the Madawan and Spring Lake attacks. It wasn't unreasonable to think the same shark had attacked Charles Van Sant in Beach Haven. In order of time, the attacks followed a regular south-to-north route up the coast. And there were no more attacks that summer. What exactly happened in the summer of 1916 is a question that will probably never be answered. The evidence above points to one shark, a juvenile Great White, being responsible for all the attacks, but why? There's been no pattern of shark attacks quite like it since. Animals are not identical clones stamped out on a production line, and it's possible this one shark had a weird mind, unusually aggressive and persistent. I mean, you know, animals can be assholes

too, right? So maybe this was just an asshole shark, or it might have just been incompetent. Maybe it couldn't catch a Great White's natural prey of blubber-rich marine animals and had to settle for a seal's slow, grisly cousin instead. Us. Recent studies have thrown some cold water on the idea of a rogue shark, instead suggesting that grouped shark attacks come about due to changes in water salinity and temperature, bringing large numbers of sharks together in one area and then, of course, increasing the likelihood of attack, just by sheer numbers. But the 1916 attacks seem to be an exception to this rule. It seems likely they were the work of one mad shark.

It's natural to be scared of sharks, especially the big ones, which are, after all, huge-mouthed predators with no reason at all to treat us any differently than any other mammal in the sea. But it's important to remember that almost all sharks are not dangerous to humans. They're ancient and beautiful creatures that just want to be left alone. And even with the dangerous ones, if you apply just a little common sense, your chances of being attacked are infinitesimally small. bottom line is it's their ocean we just visit it sometimes so that was a wild one right campers you know we'll have another one for you next week but for now lock your doors light your lights and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire

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