Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916
Michael Capuzzo
Language: English
Pages: 317
ISBN: 0767904141
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Combining rich historical detail and a harrowing, pulse-pounding narrative, Close to Shore brilliantly re-creates the summer of 1916, when a rogue Great White shark attacked swimmers along the New Jersey shore, triggering mass hysteria and launching the most extensive shark hunt in history.
During the summer before the United States entered World War I, when ocean swimming was just becoming popular and luxurious Jersey Shore resorts were thriving as a chic playland for an opulent yet still innocent era's new leisure class, Americans were abruptly introduced to the terror of sharks. In July 1916 a lone Great White left its usual deep-ocean habitat and headed in the direction of the New Jersey shoreline. There, near the towns of Beach Haven and Spring Lake-and, incredibly, a farming community eleven miles inland-the most ferocious and unpredictable of predators began a deadly rampage: the first shark attacks on swimmers in U.S. history.
For Americans celebrating an astoundingly prosperous epoch much like our own, fueled by the wizardry of revolutionary inventions, the arrival of this violent predator symbolized the limits of mankind's power against nature.
Interweaving a vivid portrait of the era and meticulously drawn characters with chilling accounts of the shark's five attacks and the frenzied hunt that ensued, Michael Capuzzo has created a nonfiction historical thriller with the texture of Ragtime and the tension of Jaws. From the unnerving inevitability of the first attack on the esteemed son of a prosperous Philadelphia physician to the spine-tingling moment when a farm boy swimming in Matawan Creek feels the sandpaper-like skin of the passing shark, Close to Shore is an undeniably gripping saga.
Heightening the drama are stories of the resulting panic in the citizenry, press and politicians, and of colorful personalities such as Herman Oelrichs, a flamboyant millionaire who made a bet that a shark was no match for a man (and set out to prove it); Museum of Natural History ichthyologist John Treadwell Nichols, faced with the challenge of stopping a mythic sea creature about which little was known; and, most memorable, the rogue Great White itself moving through a world that couldn't conceive of either its destructive power or its moral right to destroy.
Scrupulously researched and superbly written, Close to Shore brings to life a breathtaking, pivotal moment in American history. Masterfully written and suffused with fascinating period detail and insights into the science and behavior of sharks, Close to Shore recounts a breathtaking, pivotal moment in American history with startling immediacy.
paralysis of the limbs—including the muscles of the larynx, causing death by asphyxiation. Dr. Vansant was powerless to stop the course of the disease, and it had broken his stoic reserve more than once to watch a child die. It brought back painful memories from his youth in the nineteenth century, rattling in the City Hospital horse cart to the river tenements, where rag-shrouded creatures shrank from his touch. Doctors were considered agents of death, and the poor went to hospitals to die; the
from New York, swore he'd never swim beyond the lifelines again. Dowling, the flamboyant New York scion and celebrity swimmer, was more emphatic. Of the two men, he had swum closer to the path of the shark, quite near it, there seemed no doubt. He swore he would never swim in the ocean again. “Never again,” he repeated. “At least, not here.” The Red Canoe The sun crossed the coast road that afternoon in a declining arc, laying planks of shade under the entrance of the Essex and Sussex.
reputation of being the scientific community's reigning shark expert. It was Lucas who had dispatched John T. Nichols, one of his brightest assistants, to investigate the death of Charles Bruder in Spring Lake. But Nichols suspected a killer whale, while the newspapermen, and the public at large, were obsessed with the idea of a man-eating shark—a subject that, to the press's lament, no other men of science seemed to know much about. No less an authority than The New York Times—already the
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
long. The great white that had escaped Matawan Creek, the big fish that had attacked five men in unprecedented frenzy, is as likely a suspect in that boat attack as the ocean could produce, yet it cannot be proven. What is known is that on that Friday the moon was nearly full, and the shark was intense with need, and as it cruised Raritan Bay there sounded a rich and confusing cocktail of scents and sonic bursts, boats and mammals. North and east lay all the bays and harbors and beaches of New