The Summer America Learned To Fear Sharks

In the summer of 1916, many Americans believed something that was about to be proved catastrophically wrong: the sharks of their northern Atlantic coast did not attack living human beings.

Scientists knew that sharks could be dangerous elsewhere in the world, and sailors had told stories about them for centuries. But many respected American experts doubted that sharks living in the temperate waters north of Cape Hatteras would deliberately attack a person. Some even questioned whether a shark’s jaws could sever human limbs or break large bones.

In 1891, wealthy New York businessman and sportsman Hermann Oelrichs offered $500 for one authenticated case of a shark attacking a living person in those temperate waters. Nobody successfully claimed the reward. Oelrichs died in 1906, but the unclaimed challenge was still being cited a decade later as evidence that the danger was practically imaginary.

The Jersey Shore was crowded in July 1916. A brutal heatwave drove people towards the water, while a polio epidemic encouraged families with money to escape the cities. War had closed much of Europe to American tourists, making the familiar seaside resorts of New Jersey feel safe, fashionable and civilised.

The ocean was about to destroy that certainty.

The Horror

On 1 July, twenty-three-year-old Charles Vansant of Philadelphia went for an early-evening swim at Beach Haven. A shark seized his leg as he returned towards shore. Rescuers dragged him from the surf while the animal reportedly followed through the shallow water. Vansant’s thigh had been stripped of flesh, and he bled to death on a desk inside the Engleside Hotel.

The death was treated as a freak event. Some reports called the attacker merely a “large fish,” while experts suggested that the shark may have been pursuing a dog swimming nearby and bitten Vansant accidentally. The beaches remained open.

Five days later, forty-five miles north at Spring Lake, twenty-eight-year-old hotel bell captain Charles Bruder was swimming more than a hundred yards from shore when a shark attacked him. Lifeguards rowed towards his screams and pulled him into their boat, but the wounds were catastrophic. Bruder bled to death before they could reach the beach.

Now the resorts began to panic. Beaches erected protective nets, patrol boats searched the water and armed men hunted sharks along the coast. But the fear remained an ocean fear. Almost nobody imagined that the danger could travel inland.

Then came 12 July.

Matawan Creek was a narrow, muddy tidal waterway connected to Raritan Bay. At the town of Matawan, it lay roughly eleven miles from the open Atlantic. It was the kind of place where local children swam from old docks on hot afternoons.

That morning, retired sea captain Thomas Cottrell reportedly saw a large shark moving through the creek and attempted to raise the alarm. His warning was dismissed. Sharks, people believed, did not swim into shallow inland creeks and hunt human beings.

At around two o’clock, eleven-year-old Lester Stillwell was swimming with other boys near Wyckoff Dock when a dark shape appeared in the water. Before Lester could escape, the shark seized him and pulled him beneath the surface.

His terrified friends ran into town for help. Several men entered the creek to search for him, among them twenty-four-year-old Stanley Fisher, a local businessman and tailor. Fisher repeatedly dived into the murky water while crowds gathered along the banks.

Fisher eventually found Lester’s body and attempted to bring it back. As he moved through the creek, the shark attacked him, tearing deeply into his right thigh. The boy’s body was lost again as the men fought to pull Fisher ashore. Fisher was rushed towards hospital but died from blood loss that evening.

Approximately half a mile downstream and less than an hour later, fourteen-year-old Joseph Dunn was swimming with his brother and a friend when the shark seized his leg. The other boys grabbed him, and a desperate struggle followed between them and the animal. They managed to drag Dunn free.

He was the only one of the five victims to survive.

America briefly went mad. Nets and wire barriers were stretched across swimming areas. Armed patrols searched the coast. Men fired into the water, fishermen slaughtered sharks indiscriminately and residents threw dynamite into Matawan Creek. A reward was offered for the animal, while federal officials discussed using the Coast Guard to protect the beaches.

On 14 July, taxidermist and animal trainer Michael Schleisser caught a young great white shark in Raritan Bay, only a few miles from the mouth of the creek. The shark measured approximately seven and a half feet and nearly sank his small boat before he killed it with a broken oar.

When its stomach was opened, investigators reported finding bones and flesh believed to be human. Experts identified the animal as a great white and declared it the Jersey man-eater. No further attacks occurred along the New Jersey shore that summer.

But the case was not truly solved. The physical evidence was not preserved well enough for modern testing, and scientists still debate whether one great white committed all five attacks. Great whites can enter brackish water, especially on a high tide, but bull sharks are far better adapted to rivers and freshwater. The attacks may have involved one shark, several sharks or even more than one species.

The answer disappeared with the animal.

The Modern Relic

The attacks permanently changed the American understanding of sharks. Experts who had dismissed the danger were forced to revise their claims, newspapers transformed sharks into deliberate man-eaters and an entire coastline learned that deep water was not required for an attack.

The events later became inseparable from Jaws, although the connection is more complicated than legend suggests. Peter Benchley published his novel in 1974, setting it in a fictional Long Island resort where officials resist closing the beaches because tourism matters more than warnings. The novel itself refers to the 1916 attacks as a historical precedent.

Benchley nevertheless denied that the New Jersey attacks directly inspired the book. His initial idea grew instead from reports about enormous great white sharks caught by fisherman Frank Mundus off Long Island. The parallels with 1916 — a coastal resort, repeated attacks and officials fearing economic ruin — helped attach the two stories permanently in the public imagination.

Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film turned that fear into a global phenomenon. The shark became not an animal but a monster: calculating, vengeful and almost supernatural. Benchley later became a committed ocean conservationist and repeatedly explained that sharks do not behave like the creature he created.

Matawan Creek still flows beneath the town. The railway bridge remains near the place where Lester Stillwell’s body was recovered two days after the attack. Stanley Fisher and Lester are buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, the rescuer and the child he died trying to bring home.

In 2016, on the centenary of the attacks, Matawan unveiled a memorial dedicated to the victims. The town continues to remember the day when an impossible predator entered an ordinary swimming hole and overturned what science thought it knew.

Four deaths, one survivor and twelve days that changed the meaning of the sea.

We are still telling the story.

We just call it Jaws.

HASHTAGS: #darkhistory #history #truehistory #historytok #jaws #1916sharkattacks #jerseyshore #matawancreek #peterbenchley #ghostsandhistory

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