Close to Shore - Michael Capuzzo [58]
At the tender age of twenty-five, Schauffler was something of a local wunderkind—the highest-ranking medical doctor in the state. Tall and broad-boned, rugged yet affable in a small-town way, Dr. Schauffler was a born leader of men, trailed often by a group of youths “who were ready for anything, and afraid of nothing,” a family friend remembered. Within a year, in World War I, Schauffler became an American hero, a captain commanding the legendary 90th Aero Squadron under Brigadier General Billy Mitchell. In the 1930s, he organized men into a pioneering sea and air fire rescue squad that responded to the fiery wreck of the Hindenburg in Lakehurst, New Jersey.
Now, as Colonel Schauffler kneeled to inspect Bruder's corpse, a troubled expression creased his youthful features. It was fifteen minutes after the attack and blood still oozed from the bell captain's tattered limbs. Schauffler's appraisal was that of a doctor who was also a skilled fisherman. He was a part-time charter captain who took his boat out of nearby Point Pleasant. A compulsive student of fish and their habits, he designed and sold his own line of rods for deep-sea fishing, and was credited for innovating a fighting chair where a man could strap in to battle big fish like marlin and tuna. Now, studying Bruder's partially devoured torso, the legs that ended in torn and bloodied nubs, Schauffler reached what he considered the gravest possible conclusion. The wounds were without a doubt the work of a large shark. Later, Schauffler filed the first detailed medical report of a shark attack victim in the United States. “The left foot was missing as well as the lower end of the tibia and fibula,” he wrote. “The leg bone was denuded of flesh from a point halfway below the knee. There was a deep gash above the left knee, which penetrated to the bone. On the right side of the abdomen low down a piece of flesh as big as a man's fist was missing. There is not the slightest doubt that a man-eating shark inflicted the injuries.”
Schauffler's report anticipated the classic study of shark attack victims by South African doctors Davies and Campbell half a century later. In the later terminology of Davies and Campbell, Bruder suffered the severest shark-inflicted injury possible, a grade-one. Grade one injuries involve major damage to the femoral artery in the area of the femoral triangle, or multiple artery severing. Had Bruder suffered the same attack in the early twenty-first century, he still would have died, even with instant and advanced medical response. In a grade-one shark injury, wrote Davies and Campbell, “the victim usually dies within minutes after the attack.”
As Schauffler rose from beside Bruder's body, he was convinced of what had to be done. He was already forming plans to organize a patrol, armed men and a fleet of boats, to protect bathers and capture and kill the shark. The shark, he believed, was a confirmed man-eater, a large and deranged animal that would continue to threaten swimmers until it was destroyed.
Word preceded Dr. Schauffler to the lobby of the Essex and Sussex that the bell captain had been torn to pieces by a shark. Panic, like a billowing ether, occupied the grand room. Troubled guests had gathered in knots of conversation, and manager David Plumer found himself dealing with the matter of Bruder's body and comforting the stricken. “The news that the man had been killed by a shark spread rapidly through the resort, and many persons were so overcome by the horror of Bruder's death that they had to be assisted to their rooms,” The New York Times reported. “Swimmers hurried out of