Close to Shore - Michael Capuzzo [107]
That night the Mohawk stood at anchor in New York harbor, where it would remain. For in the days to come, a shark-extermination program along the 127-mile-long New Jersey coast would be judged “impracticable,” and the campaign would be abandoned.
The federal government's final suggestion to New Jersey and its bathers was the same as Governor Fielder's: Install wire netting, and stay in shallow water. John Cole, director of all government lifesaving stations on the New Jersey coast, had a different opinion. “Where there are no nets, the best way to keep from getting bit is to keep out of the water,” he said. “I wouldn't go in.”
Something Peculiarly Sinister
The two men were going fishing in the bay, hoping to catch lunch or even dinner, if the fishing was good. In the early hours of Friday, July 14, the sky was cloudy, but the bay was calm. It was a splendid morning to be on the water. The men were friends and they had been lingering on the small wharf in the old port town of South Amboy, when Michael Schleisser, the smaller of the two, found an old oar handle lying on the wharf. The oar was snapped in half, the paddle gone, driftwood of a forgotten evening, an absent adventure. Schleisser picked it up and put it with his fishing gear.
“What do you need that for?” John Murphy asked his friend.
“Oh, it'll come in handy for something,” Schleisser said.
Michael Schleisser was indeed good at cobbling things into something. He was brilliant with his hands. Schleisser was all of five-foot-six, a wiry man with a wide forehead and a long, tapering face and a handlebar mustache. Forty years old, he had emigrated from his native Serbia fifteen years earlier and had become one of the foremost taxidermists in the United States, specializing in turning out impressive trophies for hunters and fishermen. He was renowned as an animal trainer, and he was a big-game hunter who'd traveled the world and stalked the African veldt. In the backyard of his house in Harlem were a tethered black bear, gray wolf, red fox, and opossum, several large alligators in a tank, as well as an aviary, several turtles, a cage of white rats, and other animals. On the second floor were cases displaying mounted rare butterflies, racks of firearms, rows of animal heads, and stuffed animals from Asia, Africa, and South America. Michael Schleisser had trained or killed everything that moved, and was afraid of nothing.
John Murphy, a twenty-eight-year-old Bronx resident, knew his way around boats. He worked as a laborer for a steamship company. Together the men loved to fish Raritan Bay.
The launch was small, an eight-foot wooden motorboat, but ideal for two men fishing. Schleisser and Murphy sailed past Staten Island through Outerbridge Reach, entered Laurence Harbor, and finally reached Raritan Bay below Staten Island. They threw a six-foot net over the stern and began to trawl the bay with it. The net was great for snagging bait fish like tunny and menhaden. The boat chugged along smoothly, the net running six feet deep. After an hour, they had sailed far from the wharf at Amboy, and were motoring at the bottom of Raritan Bay, roughly four miles from the mouth of Matawan Creek.
Shortly before noon, the boat slammed to a halt. Scheissler and Murphy hit the floor, hands out to protect themselves. The force was such that the engine immediately sputtered and died. But the men knew they weren't having engine trouble. As Schleisser and Murphy righted themselves, they saw that something was caught in the net, something big. The boat began to move backward, stern first, against the waves. Water leaped the gunwales. The boat was being pulled backward fast, and dragged down. It was being pulled under.
Gifted with the ability to remain calm during a crisis, Schleisser, his heart raging, focused his gaze behind the boat. In the net he saw what he would later describe as “a big bifurcated tail flash out of water.” He