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By Root 347 0

and bandaging the wound, but the bleeding remained profuse. He discussed with the other doctor transporting Charles to a hospital by motorcar, but the wound was so severe, they agreed he would not reach the hospital in time. Half a century later, Vansant's wound would have been considered relatively minor for a shark attack, medium-severity arterial damage, which “the victim usually survives if correct [modern] treatment is administered on the beach,” according to South African doctors D. H. Davies and G. D. Campbell in The Aetiology, Clinical Pathology and Treatment of Shark Attack. But that evening, at 6:45, an hour after he entered the water for a swim, Charles Epting Vansant died of shock and massive hemorrhaging on Robert Engle's office door. Dr. Eugene LaRue Vansant looked on helplessly as his son died.

Within a year, grief would age him terribly, turn his hair completely white, and leave him a stooped and beaten man.

That evening a hush fell over the Engleside dining room. But after dinner, hotel guests cornered fishermen and baymen and other wizened veterans of the shore who drifted on and off of the veranda all night long. The red trails of pipes and cigars waved in the night, and the number of people who had witnessed the attack seemed to grow by the hour. Robert Engle tried to remain stoic and calm as reporters from Philadelphia newspapers scuttled about the lobby and veranda, questioning his guests. Disagreements and arguments broke out, until finally a consensus emerged of suspects in young Vansant's death: a giant tuna, a shark, but most likely a great sea turtle, which had the power, the fishermen said, to snap a man in half. The attending physician had a different opinion. He recorded the primary cause of death on Vansant's death certificate as “hemorrhage from femoral artery, left side,” with the contributory cause being “bitten by a shark while bathing.” It was the first time a shark bite had appeared as an official cause of death in U.S. history. Seeking to reassure his guests, Engle stood and declared bathers had nothing to worry about—the next morning, the hotel would erect a netting around the beach strong enough to block German U-boats. Swimming in the clear, paradisal waters of the Engleside would go on as usual.

But a somber mood pervaded the Engleside that evening as one by the one the hundreds of room lights that cast out over the shore winked out. A new and nameless fear had seized the guests, a fear of the unknown as well as a fear of the sea. Even those who watched the attack had little notion of what they had witnessed, except to agree, as W. K. Barklie told whoever would listen, “Mr. Vansant's death was the most horrible I ever saw.”

Screams for Rescue

All morning the waves came in murmuring softly and occasionally rising out of line and falling in a muffled boom. But the swells were low where the Atlantic City beach canted gently toward the sea, and the bathers breached them easily. The sun was high as Gertrude Schuyler stepped into the surf and splashed seawater on her bathing costume. She glanced back at her husband and eight-year-old daughter on the beach, and then she was in, a cool shock in the beginning, but presently she was accustomed to it. A typist employed in an office in Manhattan, her skin was porcelain white, city skin, and she glanced longingly at the warm, sun-bright sky, for a “ruddy sunburn” was coming into vogue. Sunburn took a harsh toll on the day-trippers, one of many hazards at the beach in those days. But it is not likely she worried about such things, for she was young and knew little about the sea beyond the excitement of being there. She'd had little experience swimming.

The view out to sea was splendid if a bit overwhelming for a city girl, the sea without end until Europe. Curling at the edges of her vision were the sandy wastes of Absecon Island. The island, she knew, was one hundred miles south of New York, not far north of Cape May. If Gertrude was aware that north across Little Egg Inlet lay Long Beach Island, and that on the island was a