Close to Shore - Michael Capuzzo [93]
Joseph and Michael Dunn, the sons of John Dunn of East 128th Street in New York City, were spending the summer with their mother at Cliffwood, a quarter of a mile below Matawan. Not only did Cliffwood represent an exciting summer at the shore, the creek itself tantalized boys with the legends of pirates and buried treasure. It was said Captain Kidd sailed on Raritan Bay and Blackbeard had come up the creek and attacked farmers and villagers.
That Wednesday afternoon, however, the boys were simply looking to cool off with a swim during the late hot part of the day, and Joseph Dunn, the youngest, raced to get in the water first. Neither Joseph Dunn nor his brother or friend knew that Lester Stilwell and Stanley Fisher had been attacked half an hour earlier, three quarters of a mile away. Had Joseph looked upcreek, he might have seen a large fin trailing toward the brick docks; “the shark, after feasting on the Stilwell boy and . . . Fisher's flesh, was on his way out to sea again and still was hungry,” the New York Herald wrote. “Apparently the shark had finished his disturbed meal in the channel at Matawan and, knowing, as such creatures do know, in some mysterious manner that the tide was running out, had started back for the deeper water of the bay.”
A quarter mile away, the small engine of the Skud beat the turgid water to a froth as Captain Cottrell motored along bends in the creek, shouting his warnings to people on the banks and to any swimmers he could find. But the creek was wild and deserted for long stretches; the work was slow, and the captain felt he was racing the shark. After the attack on Lester Stilwell, a small armada had joined Cottrell. At the mouth of the creek in Keyport, a mile and a half from Matawan, A. A. Van Burskisk, borough recorder of Keyport, and William O'Brien had gone up the creek in a motorboat armed with pistols and a rifle, prepared to save swimmers and “ready to shoot any shark showing himself.” By the time Stanley Fisher was attacked, half a dozen motor craft were out on Matawan Creek, searching for the shark and spreading the warning.
“It would seem that few could miss such a warning,” the New York Herald later reported. But Joseph Dunn and his companions were among the few. Dunn looked into the brown surface of the water and saw nothing but his own reflection. And so, at about four o'clock that afternoon, he jumped.
Dunn swam toward the middle of the creek. His brother Michael was in next, and he, too, was swimming, and then Jerry Hollohan joined them. Moments later, the warning finally reached the boys at the brickyard docks. A man ran to the creek, warning of a shark, and the boys swam quickly back toward the docks. Hollohan and Michael Dunn climbed the ladder out of the water and Joseph was swimming toward the ladder as fast as he could, when something enormous and hard and “very rough” struck him and scratched his skin, resulting in a painful cut.
“I was about ten feet from shore and looked down and saw something dark . . . I did not see him the first time he hit me . . . then he turned and came back and got my leg.” The enormous jaws of the shark closed on Dunn's leg and began to pull him away toward deeper water. The shark was struggling in the shallow water to turn its great body around and flee with its prey. “Suddenly I felt a tug, like a big pair of scissors pulling at my leg and bringing me under . . . the teeth of the shark evidently clamped down on my leg quickly and I thought it was off. I felt as if my leg had gone.” In fact, the shark's serrated teeth were grating and shredding Dunn's leg as it tried to pull the boy into deeper water, where it could attack and feed without distraction. Incredibly, Dunn felt very little pain. The screams came instead from a terrifying thought: “It seemed the fish was [trying] . . . to get my whole leg inside his mouth