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Jun 25, 2025

Summer shark attacks in 1916 were a dress rehearsal for "Jaws"

DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM If you were in anywhere near a movie theater in the summer of 1975, it was a piece of music from “Jaws” that is seared into your psyche, and for years

DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM

If you were in anywhere near a movie theater in the summer of 1975, it was a piece of music from “Jaws” that is seared into your psyche, and for years afterward, you always heard it as you cautiously tip-toed into the roaring ocean surf.

Probably in the history of film music, no other score has so raised the anxiety and blood pressure level as composer John Williams’ score for the terrifying “Jaws.”

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“DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM” meant the great white killer shark was about to gear up and at flank speed select an unsuspecting victim for lunch.

A lesser “dum-dum-dum-dum-dum” meant the shark was lurking nearby in the depths perusing the luncheon menu, but not quite ready to satisfy his/her hunger for the moment.

But sitting in a theater seat, you weren’t quite certain when Williams would crank up the rhythm and pacing which meant the hunt was on —and when it peaked to “DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM” — you better brace yourself as you spilled your popcorn all over your neighbor realizing the horror that was about to unfold before your eyes as the water churned a deep and violent cranberry red.

Ohmigod!

Author Peter Benchley of “Jaws,” had conjured a story that scared the bejesus out of millions of viewers who probably hadn’t read the book but took in the magnificent Stephen Spielberg screen adaptation.

In my opinion, the best horror pictures are those that are rooted in reality and not some fantastic computer-generated outer space nonsense of weird people and their flying machines or dinosaurs trampling through Manhattan.

Hitchcok did this magnificently when he slightly tweaked reality which dissolves into horror, and this is what Benchley and Spielberg accomplished.

Fifty years later, and we’re still scared when the shark scores his first kill, all set in the tranquil fictional resort town of Amity, on the The Cape, filled with summer tourists there to celebrate a good, old-fashioned Fourth of July.

I’m not certain whether Benchley or Spielberg were aware of what happened during the summer of 1916 when shark attacks were reported along the East Coast.

Along with the war news from Europe, came an alarming report that on July 2 a shark had taken the life of a young Philadelphian who had been vacationing at Beach Haven, New Jersey.

Four days later up the Jersey Coast at Spring Lake, a fashionable summer resort, a hotel bellboy lost both legs to a rogue shark in a particularly violent attack.

Readers of The Sun on July 13 were stunned to learn there was a third terrifying shark attack at Matawan, New Jersey, with headlines that said: “Tiger Of Sea Invades Matawan Creek, New Jersey, And Attacks Boys In Swimming —- Man Bitten While Searching For Body, Hunt For Monster Futile.”

The Sun reported that a “man-eating shark” had “strayed from the Atlantic Ocean, swam through the Raritan Bay and up Matawan Creek this afternoon, killed a boy swimmer, mangled a man so badly that he died two hours later in a hospital, and savagely attacked a second boy bather, taking away nearly all the back of a leg.”

Stanley Fisher had gone to the aid of the boy, Lester Stillwell, whose body he found on the bottom. Suddenly he began screaming and waving his his hands, reported the newspaper.

“A moment later there was a scream and Fisher cried out that he was being attacked. The maneater’s teeth were sunk deep into his leg near his thigh.

People on shore witnessed him flinging his hand helplessly over his head and then suddenly vanished as he was pulled underwater.

The water was suddenly dyed red with Fisher’s blood as two men in a boat who were helping in the search for Stillwell went to his aid.

Dragged onto the beach, a doctor worked feverishly to save Fisher’s life.

“He found the flesh of the right leg was ripped off from the hip to the knee, leaving a jagged wound about 18-inches long. The bone was not crushed. The doctor estimated about 10 pounds of flesh was missing,” observed The Sun.

A New York and Long Branch Railroad passenger train was flagged to a stop and Fisher was placed aboard and taken to nearby Monmouth Memorial Hospital in Long Branch, N.J., where he died several hours later from severe loss of blood after attending doctors were unable to alter the outcome.

The shark’s work was hardly finished that fateful afternoon before leaving the Matawan Creek when he made one final attack on a 12-year-old boy who was swimming off a pier.

Despite suffering a bite on his knee, the boy survived.

The frequency and violence of the attacks piqued the attention of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries which launched an immediate investigation.

“While it is true that occasionally human beings have been attacked by sharks in tropical waters, the number of such instances in temperate waters, of which these are apparently the first authoritative ones on our coast, are so exceedingly rare that bathers need have little fear,” advised th bureau.

Despite reassurances from Washington, armed shark hunters patrolled the New York and New Jersey coasts hoping to find and destroy the marauding monster, while others with binoculars and eyes stared seaward from beaches for any sign of trouble.

Theories were plentiful as to the cause of the attacks.

One was due to the war, because garbage that had been previously thrown overboard from ships, had ceased during wartime, would have left a deadly but welcome trail for German U-boats on the hunt.

The thought was that deprivation of their normal food cycle had caused the man-eaters to become ravenous which lured them to the coastline and “attack human beings,” reported The Sun.

As the panic spread, shark sightings were reported in the Chesapeake Bay.

“The shark sacre that has brought terror to the summer resorts along the Atlantic Coast from New York to Florida struck Annapolis today and threw fright into the many persons of this city and Naval Academy who frequent the nearby shores of the Chesapeake Bay and Severn River for bathing purposes,” The Sun reported.

Washington White, a crewman aboard the state police schooner May Brown, reported observing a “big sea monster” in Annapolis harbor.

“It is not unlikely, however, that some of the man-eaters are in the waters of the bay, in view of the fact that they are reported in large numbers along the Atlantic Coast, and also that a school was seen off Old Point Comfort,” reported The Sun.

But despite the number of shark reports reportedly seen locally and the resultant hysteria, there were no shark attacks in Maryland or loss of life that summer.

Another influence on Benchley, who was the son of author, Hollywood star and Algonquin Round Table wit, Robert Benchley, was the Japanese torpedoing during World War II of the cruiser USS Indianapolis.

The ship, which sailed without escorts on a top-secret mission, delivered to Tinian Island uranium and other atomic bomb components that were dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

After completing her mission, the ship was steaming toward Leyte on July 30, 1945, when it was hit by two torpedoes.

Three hundred crewmen out of 1,195 onboard went down with the vessel while 890 were cast into the sea.

Because the ship was on a secret mission and there was no radio contact with the base, four days passed before its crew in the sea was spotted by a passing Navy plane on a routine patrol.

By then, many had perished from hypothermia, dehydration, saltwater poisoning and shark attacks, leaving only 316 survivors..

The character Quint, the old seadog and shark hunter in “Jaws,” was played perfectly by Robert Shaw who tells Richard Dreyfus, the marine biologist in the role of Matt Hooper, and the Amity police chief, Martin Brody, starring Roy Schneider, over a few drinks that he survived the Indianapolis sinking.

Quint is a modern day version of Capt. Ahab from “Moby Dick” in his quest to track down and kill the great white shark that has been terrorizing Amity.

It was reported later that Benchley had regretted that “Jaws” had kicked off this worldwide fear and killing of sharks.

In 2024, the International Shark File reported that out of 28 U.S. shark attacks there had been only one fatality, and that occured in Oahu, Hawaii.

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Frederick N. Rasmussen is a Baltimore Fishbowl contributing writer. He previously wrote for The Baltimore Sun and The Evening Sun for 51 years, including three decades as an obituaries reporter. More by Frederick N. Rasmussen