Close to Shore - Michael Capuzzo [112]
Nichols had hunted sharks many times for the gains of science and knew how a man squandered hours and days on the water and grew sleepy and cramped and bored—until, when it was least expected, a shark exploded from the deep. Murphy had learned the same lessons in the South Atlantic, having spent endless days stalking the great whales. But they didn't have endless days now.
As the sun came up on the second day, Nichols and Murphy trailed steel hooks on strong chains baited with the “tempting morsel” of a cow's lung. Animal blood radiated and diffused in the water as the launch rode the gentle bay, bearing the long shadows of men, tired and bored, on the waters they had known since boyhood that now seemed somehow alien.
Like a Tale from the Stone Age
There was nothing left to do but cut open the fish to see what its stomach contents revealed, but Michael Schleisser disappointed his audience. Instead he recruited men to lift the huge creature into his automobile.
Back at home in his Harlem row house, Schleisser worked quickly, for the fish would decay rapidly. That afternoon, in the basement given over to a taxidermy studio, Schleisser began the enormous task of mounting the shark. It measured seven and a half feet long and weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. It was a dark, dull blue on top and white underneath. Schleisser cut the fish open and removed the stomach, whereupon a terrible odor filled the basement, and the taxidermist found himself sorting through a large, grisly pile of flesh and bones. There was a mix of large and small bones, and the bones appeared to be human. Schleisser weighed the flesh and bones together and they came to approximately fifteen pounds. As he studied the gruesome scene in the dim light of his basement, Schleisser came to believe he had caught the man-eating shark that had terrorized New Jersey for the first two weeks of July. As Schleisser began to mount the shark, that Tuesday, July 14, President Wilson had already suspended the war on sharks, and John Treadwell Nichols and Robert Cushman Murphy were making plans to hunt the predator in Jamaica Bay, unaware that an apparent man-eater had been caught. Schleisser, a showman at heart, felt no immediate need to inform the world. He wanted to confirm that the bones in the shark's stomach were human, and for that he required the assistance of a scientist. Schleisser resolved to ship the bones to the most famous scientist he personally knew, one whose word was beyond reproach. But first he made a phone call to his local newspaper, the Home News.
The newspaper was in a hurry to get the story out, but recognizing the publicity value of having the shark to display, the editors were willing to hold the story until Schleisser had completed his taxidermy. Four days later, Schleisser brought the stuffed and mounted shark to the offices of the Harlem newspaper. The next day, the Home News proudly devoted its front page to one of the most dramatic stories in its history, with the headline: “Harlem Man in Tiny Boat Kills a 7 1⁄2 Foot Man-eating Shark.”
“Like a tale from the stone age,” the story began, “when men went forth single-handed, armed with nothing but a club, to slay ferocious beasts, is the story of two uptown men, one of whom, with the broken handle of an oar held off a monster man-eating shark after a terrific battle and finally killed it.” There was the picture of Schleisser posing with the shark mounted across the sawhorses.
That day and the next, Thursday, July 20, the newspaper promised its readers “the monster will be placed in the window of the Home News, at 135 W. 125th St., where everyone will have an opportunity to see what a man-eating shark really looks like.” Next to the man-eater, the Home News promised, would be a display of the large and small bones found in its stomach.
The box had arrived in the middle of the week at the American Museum of Natural History, addressed to the director, Frederic Augustus Lucas. It was not unusual for the museum to receive a box of dry bones, poison adders, or shrunken