originally written by Craig Hayes
If you’re just joining the feeding frenzy, you may first want to refer to Part 1 of this series. Now then…
DA-DUM…DA-DUM…DA-DUM…
Sharks are emblazoned across all manner of creative mediums in this day and age, and they’re no stranger to plenty of representations in the past either. Classic works of art, like John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark from 1778 (above), or Winslow Homer’s The Gulf Stream from 1899 (below), mix the symbolic meaning attached to sharks with how their characteristics were understood during those periods.
It’s exactly the same today. Any creative use of sharks is inherently linked to the attributes we’ve investing in them. So, in our current popular culture, we see elements like fear, strength, violence, and peril being referenced in artistic ventures featuring sharks. In the music world, all you need to do is type “shark album covers” into your search engine of choice, and you’ll be greeted by a lengthy list of imagery. Some of that is going to be powerful and perhaps even beautiful, but mostly it’s all exaggerated fantasies and hyperbolic insanity.
As with all things, it’s each to their own in appreciating any or all of those images, but in most cases, the actual content of albums adorned with sharks have little to do with the species at all.
Instead, that great big shark is on the cover because the species’ trademark executioner from the deep mythos is just damn appealing. Bands want to link the muscle and menace of sharks with their own sounds because sharks represent badass villains. The ultimate rebel. That uncontrollable threat from the deep dark below.
I’m here to talk about one release that encapsulates our fascination with sharks and their apparent villainy. Akimbo’s 2008 album, Jersey Shores, renders all of that into heart-stopping musical form. Jersey Shores is dedicated to the most important series of shark attacks ever recorded, and it’s worth revisiting that series of attacks before we tackle Jersey Shores, because they forever altered how sharks were perceived in the public consciousness, and they’re one of the prime reasons why badass sharks are so prevalent in popular culture.
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JERSEY SHORE, 1916
In 1916, between July 1st and July 12th, a series of shark attacks in the Northeastern United States left four people dead, and one scarred for life. That year, the Eastern U.S. was suffering under an intense summer heat wave, and scores of people had flocked to the beaches and seaside resorts along the Jersey Shore to alleviate their discomfort. On Saturday, July 1st, holidaymaker Charles Vansant took a pre-dinner dip in the waters off the resort town of Beach Haven, and not long after entering the ocean he was attacked, leaving his left thigh stripped to the bone.
Vansant’s rescuers claimed that a shark shadowed them into the shallows, and he died not long after being pulled from the water. But while the public were duly alarmed, and witnesses were appalled, no one thought to close the beaches.
At the time, few ichthyologists were researching sharks, and with scant information about their movements or predatory habits, sharks were often seen as more of a nuisance than danger. Attacking a swimmer ran counter to many prevailing beliefs about shark behavior, and newspaper accounts at the time took wild guesses about some kind of rampaging “sea wolf” or “sea monster.”
No one quite knew what to think, and Vansant’s death was seen, by many, as a mysterious and freak occurrence. At least, that was until July 6th, when 45 miles north of Beach Haven, at the resort town of Spring Lake, a second attack occurred.
There, bellhop Charles Bruder was taking a break from his duties for a swim when he was attacked. A witness on the beach saw an eruption of water, and yelled out that they’d seen a red canoe being upturned. However, the explosion of water was simply the result of the ferocity of the attack, and the red canoe was mistaken for the blood which jetted from Bruder’s severed legs.
Bruder was plucked from the water by a lifeboat, but there was no way he was going to survive his wounds. He told his rescuers that a shark had attacked him, before dying on the way back to shore, and after his death the public began to seriously panic as word of a rogue shark soon spread. What happened next marked a turning point in shark lore, searing the Jersey Shore events into the mind of a nation, and eventually transforming how sharks would be understood around the world for decades to come.
Thirty miles north of Spring Lake, and some 16 miles inland, lies Matawan Creek – a muddy tidal waterway, where fresh and seawater meet. The working class roots of the area were a far cry from the resort locales on the Jersey coastline, and on the afternoon of July 11th, teenager Rensselaer Cartan was swimming in the creek with his friends when something large and coarse swept by him, grazing his skin. Cartan was shocked and bloodied, and he pulled himself out of the creek with no further harm. But neither Cartan nor his friends imagined that they’d just encountered a shark.
The next day, on July 12th, retired sea captain Thomas Cottrell was taking a stroll when he spotted a massive shark in the Matawan Creek. Cottrell was well acquainted with sharks, and was convinced of what he saw, and he set off to tell the local constable. Cottrell’s warnings weren’t taken seriously at all, because the townsfolk were equally convinced that a shark would never swim upstream; that what was happening on the Jersey Shore was an aberration happening miles away; and that old man Cottrell must have had too much sun.
At 2pm, on July 12th, eleven year old Lester Stillwell was swimming in an area of the creek by the broken down Wyckoff dock with his friends. The group of boys spotted what they thought was a large log drifting by in the current, before Stillwell was suddenly shook violently to and fro, and then disappeared under the water. Stillwell’s friends immediately ran for help, telling everyone they encountered that a huge black fish had dragged Stillwell under the brackish water.
Two of the first local residents to respond, Watson Stanley Fisher and George Burlew, knew that the Stillwell boy was prone to epilepsy, so while they were cautious of the boy’s tale of shark being in the creek, they didn’t discount that Stillwell might simply have had a fit. Fisher and Burlew searched the river by boat at first, but with no luck they eventually entered the cloudy waters to hunt for Stillwell’s body.
Burlew gave up searching first, and he was swimming back to shore when Fisher cried out that he had found Stillwell’s body. Then, seconds later, Fisher cried out again, as the shark attacked him in front of a large gathering of townsfolk. A macabre ballet played out as Fisher screamed and fought the shark while trying to hold on to Stillwell’s body. But when Fisher finally broke free from the shark’s jaws, and made it to shore, his right thigh had been torn to shreds – an injury that proved too massive to survive.
Thirty minutes after Fisher had been attacked in front of a shocked community, and half a mile away, 14 year old Joseph Dunn was swimming in Matawan Creek with his brother and a friend. A local man ran to the creek bank, warning the boys to immediately exit the waters, but as Dunn quickly swam for shore he was attacked too. Dunn survived, after a tug-of-war between his rescuers and the shark. He was the fifth and final victim of the attacks, alive but wounded, while four others had perished in gruesome and traumatic circumstances.
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THE VILLAIN
The Jersey Shore attacks were widely reported. In fact, they were the first deadly shark encounters to be reported throughout the U.S and around the globe. The published accounts and evidence were thoroughly scrutinized by the scientific community, and debates raged about what kind of shark could be responsible. A great white shark was caught not long after the attacks, and identified as the killer, although it’s bull sharks that are well-known for tolerating both salt and fresh water, and routinely inhabiting estuaries and rivers.
Still, what kind of shark was involved was well down the list of discussion compared to the frenzy of voices calling for a massive slaughter of the species. Those 12 days of trepidation, the panicked aftermath, and the mass media coverage were all ultimately responsible for framing sharks in popular culture as the man-eating terrors from the deep that we know today.
You can see the legacy of those Jersey Shore events in the demonizing of sharks, and that has had enormous negative consequences for the species as a whole. However, on the bright side, that interest in sharks also sparked dedicated study of them, which added a great deal of knowledge about sharks to the scientific canon, and eventually led to all the research into sharks that occurs today.
Of course, scientific inquiry isn’t generally played out in front of the wider public, and the biggest cultural impact of that demonizing of sharks in this day and age is seen where the Jersey Shore attacks were mimicked in Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws.
Benchley claimed his novel, which sold over 20 million copies, was not directly inspired by the Jersey Shore attacks. Although, he obviously researched the events, because with a rogue shark preying on a resort town, the connections are very clear. Jaws the book and Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film based on the novel sensationalized and distorted the many misconceptions about sharks – particularly the great white shark. Benchley and Spielberg both played on age old fears, and tapped into underlying societal unease, and just like the reporting of the Jersey Shore attacks, Jaws (the book and film) portrayed the shark as a rampaging killer; a slave to its anthropophagus impulse.
The shark as the villain. That oft told tale. But that’s no criticism as such, because Jaws was unquestionably effective as a thriller, and repeated viewing takes nothing away from its chilling suspense. Without those Jersey Shore attacks, you could argue there is no Jaws, and you could go further and point out that those events on the Jersey Shore are ultimately responsible for every piece of sensational and/or educational entertainment released about sharks ever since.
That’s certainly the case with Akimbo’s Jersey Shores album, where we’re finally heading to next, in part three of this shark filled saga.
