Image source, Getty Images
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- Author, Michael Capuzzo*
- Author's title, BBC Culture
In the summer of 1926 it swam in the sea, near the coast of New Jersey, a length 2.7 -meter young shark that briefly displaced the First World War of the press headlines in the US.
Little known then for science, that marine creature would subsequently have a huge impact on the annals of American popular culture, becoming the star of the first modern summer blockbuster, the film “Shark” (Jaws) by Steven Spielberg, whose premiere is 50 years old this June 20.
He also made the great white shark remembered when the great war had already been forgotten.
It all happened between July 1 and 12, 1916, when a young white shark attacked five people on the east coast of the US, killing four of them.
The protagonist animal of this series of attacks, then unprecedented, created terror while traveling more than 100 kilometers along the Atlantic beaches in the holiday season.
Image source, Getty Images
The victims
The first victim was found in Beach Haven, New Jersey. Just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, Charles Vansant, was the son of a Philadelphia doctor.
The news went almost unnoticed.
The people who listened to their screams on the beach thought they were joking. The scientists said a shark did not have the “strength in the jaw” to cross human bones.
It was the first deadly attack of a shark recorded in the history of the USA, however, it did not transcend.
In the case of the second death, some bathers found a bloody bite body in the sand and ran out of the beach, screaming terrified.
Suddenly, the “marine monster” jumped to the first page of The New York Times. Another horribly shattered battery was taken from the estuary of a river. The victim died shortly after.
And another man who tried to fight with the shark was also dead.
The mayors of the area denied what was happening, fearing losing income in tourist spas, until fear caused them to close and that politicians asked the help of scientists.
An expert from the US National History Museum cost him to identify the murderer's species, but finally found the “devouring” of men: Carcharodon carchariasthe great white shark.
In a wave of panic, enraged men took rifles and tridents, throwing themselves to hunting the shark. Finally, the Escualo died when attacking the boat of a man who killed him, becoming a hero.
Image source, Getty Images
Does it sound familiar? It is the true story of “Jaws” (“Shark”), the mythical 1975 Steven Spielberg movie.
In 1974, the writer Peter Benchley moved the history of New Jersey spas to Amity, a fictional place of Long Island, in his novel “Jaws”.
Benchley's shark kills four people, including one in a estuary. A man fights with the shark and dies. The mayor denies what is happening and protects tourism dollars until horror makes him resort to a scientist.
The New York aquarium ichthologist has a hard time identifying the species until it gives the legendary “eats men”, the Carcharodon carchariasthe great white shark, and warns people about what happened in 1916.
Groups of enraged men lead a shark hunt, which, finally, dies when it attacks the boat of a man who ends up being a hero.
When I interviewed Benchley, he told me that the novel arose from his interest in shark attacks, including Frank Mundus's feats, a Long Island sports fisherman who caught a large target of a record weight of 1,554 kg.
However, in a posterior prologue of “Jaws”, Benchley referred to what happened in 1916, emphasizing that sharks stayed in a single area, killing again and again.
“I have assured again and again that each incident described in 'Jaws' … Benchley points out.
His novel was a global cultural sensation.
Fidel Castro said that “shark” represented a metaphor about predatory capitalism.
Others pointed out that he referred to Richard Nixon and the Watergate case. The book remained close to the first place in the Best-Sellers list of The New York Times For 44 weeks.
Image source, Getty Images
OLA MAJOR
The next summer, in 1975, Steven Spielberg released “Jaws”, the film.
The role of the New Jersey coast shark was interpreted by a mechanical giant monster.
And, from then on, going to swim was never the same again.
“Jaws” gave Hollywood his first blockbuster of the summer season, serving as a business model for other films.
Likewise, he inspired some terrible horror movies.
And he also horrified scientists experts in sharks, such as George Burgess, from the University of Florida, for falsely representing the “great white” as a vindictive Human Hunter.
In fact, sharks do not attack people, except rarely.
Burgess points out that the film inspired dozens of shark fishing tournaments on the east coast of the US, where they were killed “without regrets.”
In recent decades, shark hunters have contributed to twist almost all existing species.
However, “Jaws” also caused the growth of a shark and ocean conservation movement, with better and greater financing for research.
And scientists now spread the concept that sharks are part of the environment so that they are not demonized, says Burges.
Burges classified the person responsible for the 1916 attacks in the Official International Registry of Shark attacks as a great target, but other scientists say it was a Toro Shark. That is a mystery that will never be resolved.
*Michael Capuzzo is a journalist and author of the Best-Sellers “Close To Shore” and “The Murder Room”. This story was originally published in 2016 and was updated on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the movie “Shark”.
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