The shark attacks on the New Jersey coast in 1916 – The Daily Jaws

Despite this attack, the beaches of the Jersey Shore remained open. Captains entering the ports of Newark and New York City saw large sharks offshore, but these reports were dismissed. The second major attack occurred on Thursday, July 6, in the resort town of Spring Lake, 45 miles north of Beach Haven. Charles Bruder, 27, a Swiss bellhop at the Essex & Sussex Hotel, was attacked while swimming 400 feet from shore. A shark bit him in the stomach and severed his legs, turning the water red with blood. A woman alerted lifeguards Chris Anderson and George White, who rowed out in a rescue boat and discovered that Bruder had been bitten. They pulled him from the water, but he bled to death before reaching shore. According to the New York Times, several women fainted when Bruder’s mutilated body was brought ashore. Hotel guests and staff in Switzerland raised money for Bruder’s mother.

The next three attacks occurred on Wednesday, July 12, in Matawan Creek near Keyport, 30 miles north of Spring Lake and inland from Raritan Bay. Matawan, which looks more like a Midwestern city than a beach resort, seemed an unlikely place for shark attacks. When captain and Matawan resident Thomas Cottrell spotted an 8-foot shark in the creek, the city ignored his warning. At about 2 p.m., a group of boys, including 11-year-old Lester Stillwell, were playing in the creek. At an area called “Wyckoff Dock,” they noticed what looked like an old, weathered log. Suddenly a dorsal fin appeared and they realized it was a shark. Before Stillwell could climb out, the shark pulled him underwater.

The boys ran into town for help. Local businessman Watson Stanley Fisher, 24, and others dove into the creek to find Stillwell, believing he had suffered a seizure. As he retrieved the boy’s body, Fisher was also attacked by the shark, losing Stillwell. Fisher’s right thigh was badly injured and he bled to death at 5:30 p.m. at Monmouth Memorial Hospital in Long Branch. Stillwell’s body was recovered 150 feet upstream from the Wyckoff Dock on July 14.

The fifth and final victim, 14-year-old Joseph Dunn of New York City, was attacked about 30 minutes after the fatal attacks on Stillwell and Fisher, a half-mile from Wyckoff Dock. The shark bit Dunn on the left leg, but he was rescued by his brother and a friend after a fierce struggle with the shark. Dunn later told the press that he felt his leg slip into the shark’s throat and thought it had swallowed it. He was taken to Saint Peter’s University Hospital in New Brunswick, recovered from the bite, and was discharged on September 15, 1916.

As national media flocked to Beach Haven, Spring Lake and Matawan, the attacks on the Jersey Shore sparked a widespread shark panic. Capuzzo described the panic as “unprecedented in American history” and it spread along the New York and New Jersey coasts by telephone, radio, letters and postcards.

After the Beach Haven incident, scientists and the press were initially hesitant to blame a shark for Charles Vansant’s death. The New York Times reported that Vansant was “severely bitten in the surf … by a fish, probably a shark.” James M. Meehan, Pennsylvania state fisheries commissioner and former director of the Philadelphia Aquarium, claimed in the Philadelphia Public Ledger that the shark had targeted a dog and accidentally bit Vansant. He downplayed the threat sharks pose to humans: