Challenge By Fairfax

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32054, 31 July 1969, Page 15

Challenge By Fairfax

(N.Z.P: A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, July 30. The lone Atlantic oarsman, Mr John Fairfax, aged 32, today challenged a Florida newspaper to put up $U525,000 for him to fight a shark.

Mr Fairfax, the Briton, who reached Hollywood Beach, Florida, on July 19, after rowing 3500 miles from the Canary Islands, said then that he had fought a 15ft-long shark in the Atlantic during his voyage.

He told a press conference today: “They (the ’Miami Herald’) have maliciously accused me of lying and cheating, quoting unnamed sceptics

and experts. Now I want them to put their money where their mouth is. I’m staking my honour and my life; let them stake the money.” Mr Fairfax said that he was willing to simulate the conditions of his encounter with the shark by using his boat Britannia in any aquarium chosen by the “Herald.” “Of course, the shark must be game and attack me,” he said “I can’t swim after a shark to attack it—l’m sure even the sceptics and experts couldn’t do that.”

Showing the foot-long knife he had used, Mr Fairfax described how he was in the water, wearing his goggles, flippers and snorkel, 200 miles west of Africa when he saw a shark coming at him. “I went to try to strike him on the nose with the point of the knife to scare him off, but

he turned away at the last moment because, obviously he did not want to hit the boat,” Mr Fairfax said. “I was holding this diving knife, which was razor sharp, very firmly, and as he turned the knife went into his belly, a few inches from his mouth, and he ripped himself open with his own momentum.

“Blood spurted everywhere, and I saw his entrails hanging out as he swam away . . . The water was flat calm and I was flattened as far as I could, with by back to the bottom of Britannia.”

The “Herald” had said of Mr Fairfax’s story: “Can't be done, the sceptics say. And experts think it's merely highly implausible. It’s almost impossible for a swimming man to penetrate a shark’s skin with a knife, because he can’t get enough force.”