Published in the Asbury Park Press 9/13/98

THERE'S A SHARK IN THE CREEK! A shark! Get out of the water!

Imagine the fear and bewilderment that must have seized 10-year-old Joseph Dunn and his friends when they heard the shouting from the banks of Matawan Creek that hot July day in 1916.

IN SEARCH OF HISTORY: SHARK ATTACK! The program premieres at 8 p.m. tomorrow on The History Channel.

A shark? In Matawan Creek? The quiet spot where the boys were cooling themselves off was more than 10 miles from the ocean. It was as bizarre a notion as a shark turning up in a backyard swimming pool in, say, Toms River, or Howell.

But this was no joke.

It got Lester Stillwell, and grabbed Stan Fisher! For God's sake, get out!

Dunn and his friends splashed toward the dock, and one by one scrambled up the ladder, their hearts racing.

Dunn was last in line.

Hurry!

He grabbed the ladder and found the bottom step with his foot. But before he could hoist himself out of the murky water, the shark struck.

If "Jaws" scared you half to death, than the true story of the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 -- the subject of a new documentary airing on The History Channel tomorrow night -- will freak you out, for sure.

In a span of just 12 days that surreal summer, there were four fatal shark attacks in Ocean and Monmouth counties, an unprecedented and still unfathomable killing spree. The trail of blood stretched from Beach Haven to Spring Lake and then, improbably, to the brackish waters of Matawan Creek, where 10-year-old Lester Stillwell and his would-be rescuer, 25-year-old Stanley Fisher, both residents of Matawan, were torn apart.

Joseph Dunn was lucky. He was gnashed badly in the attack, but lived to tell the tale.

"I felt my leg going down its throat," the boy told the newspapermen later. "I believe it would have swallowed me."

The strange events of the summer of '16 are recounted in dramatic fashion in "Shark Attack!" which uses re-creations, historical footage of the Jersey Shore, and old newspaper clippings and photographs to good effect.

Richard Fernicola, a physician living in Allenhurst who has researched the case for years, provides much of the commentary. New Jersey historian George Moss, shark expert Richard Ellis, and two women who were young girls at the time of the attacks, Estelle Meyer, who now lives in Bernards, and Marion Smith, who still lives in Matawan, also contribute to the story. And many other local people, including Allenhurst borough commissioner Stephen J. McCarthy, who portrays a sea captain, appear in the re-creation scenes.

Fernicola is as interested in what was happening on land that summer as he is about the attacks themselves. At the time the Jersey Shore was emerging as a major resort destination. Vacationers promenaded along the boardwalks in suits and long dresses, and ocean swimming was just becoming a popular activity.

Just months before the attacks, a team of scientists had declared that there was no evidence of any unprovoked shark attacks ever occurring along the East Coast, and earlier that year the director of the American Museum of Natural History had asserted that the jaws of a shark were not powerful enough to break a human leg bone.

Added to all this was the fact that President Woodrow Wilson, a former New Jersey governor, was vacationing in Asbury Park that summer, and soon found himself caught up in the shark frenzy.

The shark's -- or sharks' -- timing was impeccable.

The first attack took place July 1, 1916. Charles Epting Vansant, a 23-year-old stock broker from Philadelphia, was bitten by a shark in the surf off Beach Haven. He was pulled from the water by a group of bathers, and died from loss of blood after being taken to a Toms River hospital.

On July 6, Charles Bruder, a Swiss bellboy at the Essex & Sussex Hotel in Spring Lake, was attacked as he swam 400 feet off the beach there. According to an article in the Asbury Park Evening Press the next day, as lifeguards hauled Bruder into a rescue boat he gasped, "A shark bit me," then fell into unconsciousness and soon died. His legs were torn off just below the knee and his left side was gashed.

His death sent the Jersey Shore into a panic. Up and down the coastline beach towns dependent on summer tourism hurriedly erected steel "shark nets" to protect bathers, and President Wilson committed the Coast Guard to join with local fishermen in hunting down marauding sharks off the coast.

Who would have thought to look in Matawan Creek? Today that winding waterway, which empties into Raritan Bay at Keyport, is bisected by the Garden State Parkway. Motorists heading north on the parkway pass by the site of the attacks at mile marker 119.4. The train trestle in the distance marks the spot where Stillwell and Fisher were killed. Dunn was attacked just shy of where the parkway crosses the creek.

What could have motivated a shark to swim that far inland? Was the 8-foot white shark caught off Sandy Hook a few days later -- with 15 pounds of human flesh in its gut -- really the culprit? Might one rogue shark have been responsible for all of the attacks?

"Shark Attack!" poses the questions, but doesn't probe very hard for scientific answers. That's a disappointment, but it's the human drama the producers are most concerned with, and those chilling details are enough to make you think twice the next time you go for a swim.

Source: Asbury Park Press

Published: September 13, 1998