Past Shark Attacks

Northland Age, Volume XVIII, Issue 37, 11 February 1949, Page 3

Past Shark Attacks

NEW ZEALAND COASTS Some few AGE readers have asked that we settle what seems to be more or less of a heavy controversy on the number of people who have been bitten by sharks in the waters round our coasts. jjjfc Some seem to maintain that there has never been a case, and others say that there have been two. After extensive research through files of libraries in Auckland, and through search of the morgues of newspapers, we append all the known cases that have occurred to date. In the late ’6Q’s a man was badly

bitten whilst swimming in the Auckland Harbour at Freeman’s Bay. At Napier on the 20th December 1896, a man named B. Cooper was taken by a white shark and was killed. Campbells Point, Auckland, was the scene of the next attack, a man being bitten more or less badly. That was in the summer months of 1898. In 1910, a man who was swimming close to the freezing works outlet, had his leg taken off by a voracious shark attack. February 1927 saw the last attack and this took place in Menzies Bay, Banks Peninsula. This man was badly mauled, but lived to tell the tale.