Jersey Shore Maneater: Shark Panic, Polio and Death in the Summer of 1916

        It is around 8 pm on July 1, 1916.  A pink sunset sky lights the horizon over the ocean on Long Beach Island, New Jersey.  The surf is calm.

Despite the darkening hour dozens of swimmers and sunbathers remain on the beach to take in the last waning moments of daylight.

One of these swimmers is twenty-five year old Charles Epting Vansant.  Vansant, and his family, have travelled from Philadelphia to the resort town of Beach Haven, New Jersey on Long Beach Island in an attempt to escape the stifling urban heat.

The Vansant’s are staying at the luxurious Engleside Hotel just steps away from the ocean in Beach Haven.  The Engleside, located at the southern end of Long Beach Island, was built in the 1870’s and at the time it is considered to be one of the most opulent Victorian-era hotels for shore goers, with an outdoor promenade, oceanview balconies a grandiose dining room and decorative Gilded Age accents located throughout the premises. 

With the summer of 1916 being one of the hottest on record for the northeastern United States, almost anyone from either New York City or Philadelphia who can afford to do so, takes the train ride down to Long Beach Island, New Jersey and books a room at the Engleside.  

In the not too distant future the Engleside Hotel will fall into disrepair during the Great Depression until it is finally torn down for raw material during the Second World War.  Years later another hotel called the Engleside Inn will be built near the location of its ornate predecessor, where it still stands to this day, but for the time being staying at the original incarnation of the Engleside is all the rage among cosmopolitan tourists.

                                                            The Engleside Hotel late 19th Century

And the year 1916 is definitely a golden age for trips to the beach.  In the years prior to  America’s entry into the First World War ocean swimming was touted as one of the healthiest and most all-American hobbies around.  

Medical experts and scientists endlessly spoke and wrote of the beneficial health effects of saltwater and fresh seabreezes.  Men routinely competed against one another to see who could swim farther and faster out into the Atlantic, while women during the first decades of the 20th century, became absolutely enamored with the latest in swimwear fashions and with the coppery skin tones they could achieve by spending countless hours basking in the sun’s seaside rays.

At the time it seemed as if a trip to the Jersey Shore could alleviate or even cure almost any ill including the ever present scourge of polio.  

Not only did the summer of 1916 see an unprecedented heatwave, with temperatures regularly spiking to over 100 degrees, hit the northeast region of the United States, but it also saw the outbreak of a deadly polio epidemic centered around New York City.

In June of 1916 authorities in New York City officially announced the outbreak of a polio epidemic with the epicenter located in Brooklyn.  The press voraciously follows the epidemic  publishing the rising death tolls in the paper each and every passing day.  By August of that year harsh travel restrictions will be imposed on residents of the five boroughs in an attempt to contain the outbreak.  Over 2000 New Yorkers will die that summer from polio and many more will fall ill of the disease.  

Most people took to quarantining themselves within their homes, crowded tenements and apartments, but the well-to-do took to travelling to places like Long Beach Island along the Jersey Shore in unprecedented numbers to escape the epidemic for the summer before it became too late.

On July 1, 1916 there were tens of thousands of tourists from New York and Philadelphia staying all along the Jersey Shore.  Some had come to escape the heat; some to escape disease and some to escape both.  And a few, like Charles Epting Vansant, would never return…

Vansant heads out to the beach at dusk with his dog by his side.  The young Vansant wants to show off for the girls sunbathing on the sand, and while his dog frolics near the shoreline in the shallow surf, he continues to swim farther and farther out.

Many of the girls do look up to watch his muscular young body as it becomes ever smaller on the horizon.  After Vansant swims out a little over 100 yards from shore people on the beach  think that they can hear him shouting.  Most believe that Vansant is calling for his dog to come and follow him out into the water.

But soon it becomes apparent that there is a problem.  Vansant’s screams grow louder and more frantic.  His head bobs up and down, and he begins to flail wildly with his arms as if signalling for help.  It looks as if an unseen force is trying to drag him beneath the waves with incredible power and violence.

The young women, who before had been gazing at the toned swimmer, now begin to scream and yell and men rush into the water attempting to run and swim out to the apparently helpless Charles Epting Vansant.  The water around Vansant begins to turn red as his flailing and yelling becomes more and more frantic.

Soon local lifeguard Alexander Ott and tourist Sheridan Taylor reach Vansant and begin to drag him back to shore.  As the two men try to rescue Vansant, an enormous shark follows them, nipping at the heels of the two swimmers until the moment they’re practically back on dry land.

Both Ott and Taylor escape back onto the beach unscathed but Vansant is not so lucky.  The flesh has been completely torn off Charles Epting Vansant’s right leg all the way from the foot to the upper thigh,  Nothing remains where skin, muscle and tissue once had been but bleached white bone.

Charles Epting Vansant fades in and out of consciousness.  He is carried gushing blood back to the Engleside Hotel where he is laid atop the manager’s desk.  He will bleed to death on that desk in the small manager’s office of the Engleside Hotel.

Charles Epting Vansant is the first victim of the Jersey Shore maneater shark of 1916.  

During one two week period starting with the attack on Vansant off Long Beach Island on the 1st of July and ending with a series of attacks farther north up the coast in Matawan on the 12th, the Jersey Shore will witness a series of deadly shark attacks in the summer of 1916 the likes of which have never been seen before.

The shark itself will quickly be dubbed the “Jersey Maneater” and reports of the attacks will cause widespread panic up and down the east coast.  In the 1970’s author Peter Benchley adopted the story of the 1916 Jersey Shore Maneater as the inspiration for his bestselling novel Jaws.

Before all is said and done, the shark attacks will claim five lives, and will end up costing businesses located along the Jersey Shore an estimated $250,000 (equivalent to $6,000,000 to today’s money) in lost revenue.  New Yorker’s, who before had sought to flee to the supposed tranquility of southern New Jersey, will be forced to return home, thereby increasing the spread of the polio epidemic before the weather finally breaks in late September of 1916.

To this day it is not known what type, or types of sharks, were responsible for the Jersey Shore Maneater attacks of 1916, although most scientists are in agreement that the shark most probably was a Great White and/or a Bull Shark because of the Bull Shark’s ability to swim close to land in shallow water.

In total, the shark that will be named “the maneater” by the press will claim five souls during that deadly summer of 1916.  But initially in the wake of the death of Charles Vansant on Long Beach Island, the danger posed by shark attacks at the Jersey Shore is largely brushed aside.  It is only after a second swimmer falls victim to the maneater five days later, this time just off the coast of the more sleepy seaside resort town of Spring Lake, that shark panic truly begins to set in.

The second victim is twenty-seven year old Charles Bruder of New York City.  He is attacked by the maneater while swimming about one hundred yards off the coast in Spring Lake.  Bruder is also attacked around the legs by the shark and despite being dragged aboard a lifeboat while still breathing Bruder bleeds to death before the boat is able to reach the shoreline.

On July 12, 1916 two boys will be killed in the water by a man-eating shark while swimming in the shallow waters of Matawan Creek a little farther north and a fifth and final victim, fourteen year old Joseph Dunn of New York City will be killed that same day near Keyport, New Jersey, while playing in shallow surf along the beach.

In the midst of five shark related deaths in the course of less than two weeks a shark panic ensues along the Jersey Shore.  The panic, thanks in large part to new technologies of mass nearly instantaneous communication such as the telephone and wireless radio signal, quickly spreads from New Jersey to beaches near New York City and then all across the entire eastern seaboard of the United States.  

After the second shark attack on Charles Bruder it is estimated that tourism to surrounding beaches declined by nearly seventy-five percent from what it had been only the week before.  

In an effort to curb the ensuing shark panic, and to encourage continued tourism to beaches in the New York City area, a press conference is held by leading scientists and law enforcement officials on July 8, 1916 at the American Museum of Natural History to urge calm and to assure swimmers and sunbathers that the chance of being mauled or killed by a predatory shark during a trip to the beach are slim to none.

But all messages of calm quickly fall on deaf ears after the attacks of July 12 near Matawan, New Jersey.  Newspapers across the country pick up the story, via telegraph and telephone and soon, masses of vigilante shark hunters begin to sail up and down the New Jersey coast looking to find and destroy the vicious beast as word of the attacks spreads.

“Armed shark hunters in motor boats patrolled the New York and New Jersey coasts today, while others lined the beaches in a concerted effort to exterminate the maneater.”

--from The Atlanta Journal Constitution July 14, 1916

Many municipalities in New Jersey, including Asbury Park and Point Pleasant erect iron metal netting one hundred yards from shore and urge swimmers to stay within the protective area to try and prevent further attacks.

Units of the Coast Guard are mobilized to search for the predator and New Jersey Governor James Fairman Fielder even offers a bounty of up to $25,000 to anyone who can either capture or kill the shark that is responsible for the five deaths.

         At the peak of the shark panic on July 14, 1916 a taxidermist and circus lion tamer named Michael Schliesser catches a seven and a half foot long three hundred and twenty five pound great white shark while fishing in Raritan Bay only a few miles north of Matawan Creek where the last of the killings took place.

Schleisser has to struggle with the beast for almost an hour, with his boat nearly capsizing in the process, before he is able to finally reel it in.  In order to kill the great white Schleisser has to resort to bashing it in the head with an oar from his boat.  Once he kills the beast Schleisser cuts open its belly and removes nearly fifteen pounds of undigested human remains.

After the 12th of July there are no further shark attacks along the Jersey Shore, and though it would appear as if Michael Schleisser did in fact, catch and kill the vicious maneater shark of 1916, theories and debate about the attacks continued to rage in the press.  Some argued that German U-boats, then known to be actively patrolling along the eastern seaboard, were somehow responsible for the death’s, while others blamed the fatalities on some unknown species of sea monster or giant squid-like creature.

At the time, it was believed that sharks, though predatory towards other aquatic life, were largely timid creatures when it came to attacking humans and other animals and were not really capable of venturing close enough to shore to feast on luckless swimmers.  However, after the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, members of the scientific community were forced to reconsider their position and more thoroughly study the behavior of sharks, specifically the great white shark, in different environments and in relation to humans.

As a direct result of the 1916 shark attacks something called the International Shark Attack File would be formed.  The International Shark Attack File tracks reports of shark attacks on swimmers all across the world and it officially lists the deaths of the 5 swimmers in 1916 as victims of a great white attack.

Today, we now know, that under the right circumstances sharks can come close to shore and we all, somewhere in the back of our mind’s each time we go to the beach, keep a watchful eye out for the tell-tale sign of a dorsal fin circling in the water to let us know when to run (or more aptly) swim for our lives.

And although we no longer panic, and millions still visit the Jersey Shore each year, we all have that deadly summer of 1916 to thank for that subtle fear of sharks like Jaws, or the Jersey Shore maneater, that flashes through our mind’s for a split second each time we gaze out across the waves toward the horizon.  It is best always to remember that we might be able to sometimes run from an epidemic or from the heat, but we can never entirely run from nature.