Close to Shore - Michael Capuzzo [72]
Everingham's lapse in judgment would come as a surprise to officials of the beach town. Asbury Park was a fabled Gilded Age resort of broad Parisian-style boulevards and grand hotels and mansions, one of which was built by John D. Rockefeller. In 1916, Asbury Park was considered a “flossy” place, a new word then for “classy.” A John Sousa band performed a summer concert series in the bandstand; a nationally famous parade of babies toddled down the boardwalk; an electrified trolley system, the second in America, ran down to the sea.
That Saturday, Mayor Laughlin Hetrick had announced a new theme for the baby parade of “demonstration of national preparedness from the standpoint of protection for mothers and babies.” Strollers on the boardwalk, who came to Asbury Park for health, looked for bottled cures such as Lenox Water, which “Relieves Rheumatism, Nervous Exhaustion and Lassitude . . . restoring nerve force,” although the Pure-Food Act had recently driven many such potions off the market. At the Asbury Avenue beach that morning, young women sported the new colorful swimsuits with bold checks and stripes, no doubt relieved at the removal of the bathhouse sign: “Modesty of apparel is as becoming to a lady in a bathing suit as it is to a lady dressed in silk and satin. A word to the wise is sufficient.”
At a quarter to noon, as Benjamin Everingham rowed parallel to the coast, perhaps he was distracted by the flashy new bathing costumes. Perhaps he was wearied from staring at the endless ocean and thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. But when he turned toward the horizon, he saw a type of gray fin cutting the low waves. In an instant he recognized it as a large shark. It seemed to be fully eight feet long, and it was bearing directly for his boat. Everingham must have regretted for a fleeting moment that he had neglected to bring a rifle or ax. Just as the shark was about to strike his boat, the surfman stood and “lifted one of the oars from its lock and struck viciously at the slimy sea monster.” Stricken, the creature turned sideways as if to flee, whereupon Everingham swung the oar and struck the big fish again, “and with a swirling of the waters the shark turned and shot out to sea.”
Crowds watching from the beach and a nearby fishing pier were puzzled as they saw Everingham standing up in his boat, striking the surface of the water with an oar. But the mystery was answered as the captain of the surfmen rowed frantically to shore, shouting that he'd seen a shark. Everingham's announcement, followed by an order to his colleagues to clear the surf, caused considerable excitement on the shore. In an uproar, more than a hundred men, women, and children ran shrieking from the Asbury Avenue beach. It did not require much urging of the guards to clear the water of the bathers.
The captain of the surfmen tried to calm the panic, telling all who would listen that “had he been armed with an axe or harpoon he might have succeeded in killing or wounding the shark.” But as soon as Everingham reported the news to his superiors, Asbury Park officials closed the beach and ordered bathers out of the water at the Seventh Avenue bathing grounds as well. The Fourth Avenue beach, enclosed by protective steel nets, remained open that afternoon, but many bathers chose to leave the water. They sat huddled on the sands, watching armed patrol boats move up and down the coast outside the netting.
The shark aroused in men old angers and thrills and new possibilities of blood lust. That afternoon, Mayor Hetrick returned from a fishing trip on his luxury yacht, Tuna, to find Ben Everingham's battle with a shark the talk of Asbury Park. The mayor immediately ordered shark hooks fashioned for his boat and announced