Crowds throng the beach at Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Among the vacationers was Charles Vansant, a 25-year-old stockbroker from Philadelphia.
The dog, however, seemed uninterested in joining him.
It was moving toward Vansant.
Suddenly Vansant shrieked and began frantically splashing as he struggled to move towards the shore.
The water around him turned crimson from his blood.
When the lifeguard dragged Vansant ashore, his left thigh was found stripped off its flesh.
Vansant died less than two hours later in excruciating pain.
His death was the first recorded fatal shark attack along the East Coast of the United States.
While local newspapers reacted with horror and disbelief, national coverage was minimal.
Bruder slipped out of consciousness almost immediately and was dead before he could be brought back to the shore.
Many hotel guests who saw the mutilated corpse vomited and fainted.
Newspapers nationwide ran dramatic headlines, turning what had once seemed like an isolated incident into a terrifying pattern.
A dorsal fin appeared in the water and the boys realized it was a shark.
Before Stillwell could climb from the creek, the shark pulled him underwater.
Fisher and others dove into the creek to find Stillwell, thinking he had suffered a seizure.
The shark dug its teeth into Fishers right thigh and tore the muscles out.
He bled to death about two hours later.
Some 30 minutes after the double tragedy at Matawan Creek, the shark attacked again, half-a-mile away.
The fifth and the final victim was fourteen-year-old Joseph Dunn.
The shark clamped down on his left leg, stripping it of flesh.
But unlike the others, Dunn survived.
His brother and a friend managed to pull him free after a desperate tug-of-war with the shark.
He spent weeks in recovery and was eventually released from the hospital two months later.
A bull shark, the kind that was probably responsible for the attacks.
The attacks marked the first time sharks were portrayed in American media as malevolent predators targeting humans.
Prior to that, sharks were rarely considered a serious threat.
Scientific consensus held that they wouldn’t attack people unless provoked.
The 1916 attacks changed that perception.
Communities along the Jersey Shore petitioned the federal government to organise hunt sharks.
New Jersey governor and local municipalities offered bounties to individuals hunting sharks.
Hundreds of sharks were captured on the East Coast following the attacks.
The legacy of these attacks lasted well into the 20th century.
Steven Spielbergs 1975 film adaptation brought those fears to the screen in a visceral way.
When Schleisser opened the shark’s belly he found suspicious fleshy material and bones.
There is no doubt about this, he wrote to Schleisser.
Photo credit:Wikimedia Commons
Some sceptics wondered whether the New Jersey man-eater was a shark at all.
A letter toThe New York Timesblamed the shark infestation on German U-boats near America’s East Coast.
The great white shark bore most of the blame.
The panic triggered by the 1916 attacks also changed the way scientists and institutions approached shark research.
