When a Shark Brutally Killed 11 Miles Inland in a creek in Matawan, New Jersey…
“Have a look at me, I’m floating…” stated the boy from eye-witness accounts from tragic occasions in 1916.
Lester Stillwell, only a boy, 12, having fun with a summer time second in a creek – earlier than terror struck and he was grabbed below by a dorsal fin and – no extra.
Who remembers, that very poignant scene in Jaws 1975 with the boy being dragged below on the lilo with blood gushing from the ocean and all people agasp and an in depth up of Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) frozen in time. A face of concern, panic, and shock.
The actual life Jaws – in Matawan Creek…
July 1916 was meant to be a peace. File warmth and a raging polio epidemic had pushed hundreds from New York and Philadelphia to the breezy New Jersey shore – one of many few locations that also felt secure . Not for lengthy.
Terror got here. It’s extensively assumed that this terror could have are available in twos.
On the night of 1 July, 23-year-old Charles Vansant waded out from the Engleside Lodge in Seaside Haven. He by no means reached the sand once more. 5 days later, bell-boy-turned-lifeguard Charles Bruder was pulled from blood-red surf at Spring Lake.
Then, the phobia turned to Matawan Creek.
Some are claiming that the assaults in Raritan Bay had been that of sea turtles, or Mackerel…They claimed that sharks weren’t aggressive in that a part of the east coast.
However like in Jaws, there may be no different rationalization for deaths as grotesque as these in Raritan and Matawan.
The thriller will not be what struck terror from the first to the twelfth July, however which shark/s did this?
Here’s a couple who took the path of the brutality and gave you a LIVE FEED of the scenes and placement of the tragedies inland.
Sound acquainted? Among the grizzly actual life occasions that occurred ended up being inspiration for the hit ebook and cult movie now celebrating its 50 yr anniversary. JAWS.
If the story had ended there in Spring Lake, it may need been filed away as a macabre seaside footnote. However the true terror was but to unfold in Matawan Creek.
Up the Creek…
As a substitute, on 12 July the horror moved off the map: a shark tore by way of slender, tea-coloured Matawan Creek, killing 12-year-old Lester Stillwell and the would-be rescuer Stanley Fisher, then mauling teenager Joseph Dunn minutes later . Matawan lies 18 km (11 mi) from the open Atlantic. The mainstream media didn’t have a phrase for that. They invented one: “man-eater within the creek.”
Was it a bull or an excellent white?
Do not forget that scene within the movie? The very scared teen – Brody’s son, Michael, with a Nice White Shark circling round him and his buddies. Think about that in a creek in 1916. However extra uncooked!
The Science vs Delusion…
In 1916 most scientists insisted sharks had been too weak-jawed, too timid, or too far offshore to hurt people. Some blamed sea turtles and large mackerel for the our bodies washing up . The assaults compelled an emergency assembly on the American Museum of Pure Historical past; specialists publicly walked again a long time of complacent dogma.
Within the movie Jaws, the clueless Mayor blames a boating propeller!
Which shark or sharks had been the offender/s?
On the time, there was no concept what might have triggered the assaults within the Creek relating to a shark. The bull shark or the Nice White? There may be far more of an concept now, however there’s nonetheless debate surrounding it! Therein the thriller lies.
In truth, a lot in order that George Burgess, an skilled on The Worldwide Shark File, stated this: “The bull attracts a variety of votes due to the placement. Matawan Creek suggests brackish or freshwaters – a habitat that bulls frequent and whites keep away from. Nevertheless, a smallish White shark clearly might have wandered into the realm. It appears seemingly that this was the shark concerned in at the least the Matawan fatalities.”
We’ll by no means actually know what occurred, however, the information converse for themselves. A shark swam inland and savaged and triggered terror on Raritan Bay and the Matawan Creek in 1916. Whether or not it was a bull or a white, we’ll by no means know! Or each!
There was even a bounty on the shark. $100 to the one that captured the beast.
A shark was captured. However was it “the shark that killed Lester and Stanley?
Within the Worldwide Shark Information, it’s reported that Bull sharks are within the prime three of essentially the most harmful sharks on the planet – together with the good white and the tiger sharks.
Many instances on bulls go unreported – and – bulls as stated can swim in anyplace in contemporary water in estuaries, rivers, creeks, and so there’s a excessive chance that the assaults in Matawan could have properly been carried out by a bull shark. However the truth that the human stays discovered within the nice white shark caught after ALL of the assaults and that the human stays weren’t recognized by DNA because of the lack of improvement in tech, suggests that we are going to simply by no means know! No bull shark was caught both.
After the assaults in each Raritan Bay and Matawan Creek, Michael Schleisser caught a 7.5 ft 325 pound nice white in Raritan Bay. Human stays had been discovered inside.
Since there was no conclusive know-how at the moment, they had been unable to establish whether or not the stays belonged to any of the victims in Raritan Bay or Matawan Creek.
The Bull shark vs the Nice White Shark…
The creek assaults match the bull shark profile eerily properly – bulls can thrive in each contemporary and salt waters; fashionable researchers from Michael Capuzzo to Dr Richard Fernicola famous that an excellent white “couldn’t plausibly survive that far upriver” .
May what Burgess have wrote have a component of fact although? Most now settle for two animals had been concerned: a coastal nice white within the first week, and a bull shark that adopted tidal baitfish into Matawan. However the thriller will perpetually hold folks questioning…What if a small nice white shark did certainly terrorise Matawan Creek?
Nevertheless, both manner, the tragedy will not be extensively identified and the occasions got a relatively modest referral in Jaws, when Chief Brody and Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) mentions the New Jersey assaults in 1916 to try to persuade the clueless Mayor that there’s a shark in Amity!
A press-fuelled panic…
As soon as reporters discovered a predator might enter a creek, restraint evaporated. New York desks cleared web page one; the Philadelphia Inquirer splashed “Shark Hunt On!” beside pictures of fishermen brandishing rifles.
Once more, scenes from Jaws with boats and fisher folks all making an attempt to catch the shark. If you happen to keep in mind in Jaws, there’s a frenzy of a reward for that one who catches the shark. Enter Captain Quint (Robert Shaw).
Even the President grew to become concerned!
President Woodrow Wilson convened a cupboard session and authorised the Coast Guard to “exterminate” sharks alongside the japanese seaboard . Tub-houses put in metal nets; entrepreneurs bought “anti-shark” bathtub salts; seaside income collapsed by as much as 75 p.c.
The 12-day frenzy grew to become a primer in media-made concern, a long time earlier than 24-hour information cycles – a residing prologue to Benchley’s Jaws half a century later.
Once more, so much occurred in Jaws, with the Mayor refusing to cancel the summer time 4th of July as a result of it might be horrible for enterprise and injury the native economic system. Nevertheless, the seashore in Jaws turns into a industrial hub because the Mayor believes that they did catch and kill a predator – a Tiger Shark, which apparently injured some bathing sea folks, parading it on the pier – however little does he know naively, that the true killer a Nice White remains to be on the market within the ocean depths!
A mistaken and naive Mayor who put income earlier than folks!
Why 1916 Matawan Creek nonetheless issues…
So why does this occasion in historical past matter?
As a result of the hypothesis is greater than the information. Ask ten beachgoers which shark impressed Jaws and 9 will identify the good white.
Few know although that essentially the most chilling assaults occurred the place no nice white might go (nonetheless an assumption for a few of course).
And few would know {that a} bull shark can swim in shallower waters in freshwater like rivers or creeks and brutally savage human life swimming there. That’s assuming it was a bull shark.
After all, it wouldn’t have swum there essentially to do this. Likelihood is, the shark was curiously swimming following prey, and it might have gotten misplaced with the tide and ended up within the Matawan Creek. Unlucky for these human beings on that fateful few days in 1916.
Bear in mind what one factors out in Jaws 2: “Sharks don’t take issues personally, Mr Brody.” Or do they? Some movies have footage of sharks “thanking” their divers swimming up shut who’ve saved them – eradicating hooks. That reveals they do have “emotions”.
A century on, we’re higher at tagging sharks but no wiser at weighing threat: deadly shark bites common six worldwide per yr – however municipalities nonetheless discuss of culls each time a fin slices the shallows.
People nonetheless chase them – there are movies on Youtube of individuals “catching sharks” for “kicks” and that may be a unhappy time in human historical past in 2025.
The 1916 case reminds us that the ocean kingdom and its surrounding habitats are for individuals who stay below it. Not these above it.
Matawan not has swimmers…
Matawan Creek seems to be strange now: reed-lined banks, joggers on a footbridge, a brass plaque close to the water. However step again to that blistering July afternoon and the scene is pure nightmare – a predator from the open sea tearing by way of a spot kids caught minnows barefoot.
That, finally, is the enduring punch of 1916: the true monster wasn’t within the ocean – it was the place nobody thought to look.
Think about – standing on the bridge and seeing a shark swimming up the river! A sea Captain noticed a shark swimming up the Matawan creek and no-one believed him. Till…
In Jaws, no-one believes Brody, till…
It’s a truth as we speak that bull sharks might nonetheless find yourself in that creek, if the circumstances had been proper. The creek as we speak will not be used for swimming and the one people “on it” are Kayakers and Canoeists.
In 2020, Rumson Police reported a number of bull shark sightings within the close by Navesrink River, elevating native concern – regardless that no assault occurred.
In Matawan Creek there have been no extra shark sightings since 1916, however as stated – sharks (most likely bulls) might nonetheless enter that Creek by way of Raritan Bay from the Atlantic Ocean if the tidal circumstances had been proper.
The shark in Matawan was by no means captured and it might have been the shark that was captured in Raritan Bay – and that’s the reason the thriller survives as we speak. The information are there. Just one lacking piece. Which shark or two! What do you suppose?
Additional studying & major sources
- Twelve Days of Terror – Richard G. Fernicola
- Near Shore – Michael Capuzzo
- Library of Congress Chronicling America newspaper scans (1–15 July 1916)
- Matawan Historic Society archive: Matawan Journal clippings
- OCEARCH bull-shark tagging knowledge for contemporary river actions
Bear in mind, subsequent time you watch Jaws or some other shark films, keep in mind the tragedies of 1916 and the way these folks will need to have felt to lose pricey ones in a terrifying tragedy that no-one might have predicted would occur – up in a creek!
Jaws is out in cinemas subsequent month UK vast and celebrates a wealthy 50 years of our fascination with what lies below the oceans (and rivers and creeks!)…
Beneath is one other tackle the tragedies…
