TRUTH ABOUT THE SHARK.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 89, 28 November 1911, Page 5

TRUTH ABOUT THE SHARK.

Sharks arc both cowardly and cruel, j hut it is difficult to study their ways from the deck of a ship as they move | slowly in a refractive medium such as | water some twenty or thirty feet below the observer. Hence the many erroneous deductions of seamen with, respect to these unsociable denizens ol the deep. The shark belongs to a type which has survived the flight of time, while other more attractive species have ceased to exist. The early voyagers were wont to attribute supernatural prescience to the shark. Often, during light winds, one of these s:a scavengers would follow a slow sailing'ship lor several successive days ami nights, and it was erroneously assumed that he docs so because aware ju some mysterious way of an impending death on board which will ensure for him a sumptuous repast. Many a shark is preceded by a few shimmering companions known as pilot fish because they are supposed to warn the shark of danger ahead, but they never prevent this Jiostis human! generis from swallowing the tempting morsel and its cunningly concealed nook.

A shark s voracity is not less marvellous than his digestion. Whether lie be a man-eater by choice or by the compulsion of hunger, the fact remanas that anyone who happens to tall overboard in the vicinity of a sjiark is likely to be snapped up by the hitter without ceremony. It is die evil reputation attaching to the whole shark tribe as regards indifference whence comes a meal that render’ 8 them so abhorrent to seafarers.. J hey are by no means epicures. Failing other food, a shark will devour a Jative that is either dead or moribund. Old sailors never weary of enlarging upon the voracity and the digestion of sharks. When in the China seas as related by the late Captain Basil Hall, R.N., a large shark was caught by H.M.S. Alceste, which was round to contain amongst other things a buffalo hide that had been thrown overboard the preceding day. One of the sailors explained this in a fay which seemed irresistibly logical in the opinion of his shipmates. “There, my said Jack, “what d’ye think of that? Ho swallowed the whole buffalo i ight enough hut he couldn’t digest the hide.” As a matter of fact, the carcase of the buffalo, unknown to tuese amateur makers of history, was still aboard the Alceste.

I here are not wanting writers who would have us believe that men lose their Jives owing to panic when m Die presence of a shark in his native element, but probably the result is equally against the man did he have all his wits about him. Nevertheless, circumstantial accounts are in evidence of instances where the shark has been defeated by the man. At Jamaica, for example, a huge shark is said to have been a terror to frequenters of the harbour he affected. Once he overturned a boat carrying provisions to the shipping, and devoured the wife pf the boatman. The maddened widower reached ; the nearest ship/ seized a sharp knife, invoked the aid of bis patron saint, leaped into the water, gave battle to the shark despite the awful odds, and succeeded in avenging his wife by slaying her destroyer.

At Barbadoes, similarly, if we may accept the report as authentic, a seaman fought with and killed a shark that had eaten a shipmate. Young Maoris, male and female, were once proficient in the slaying of sharks in open water. They would swim into the surf, armed with' a, knife, .dive under the nearest shark,' ri]o open tjie enemy, and Return to the shore. During the last decade it is said that the sailmaker of the American warship Alliance, then at anchor in St. Thomas, West Indies, leaped overboard and killed with a knife a huge shark which had gained upon some of the vessel’s crew who had disobeyed orders by venturing on a swim. A shark is very tenacious of life, and Dr. Gunther, the ichthyologist, has pointed out in one of his contributions to the literature of his subject that “wounds'affect fishes generally much less than higher vertebrates. A Greenland shark continues to feed while his head is pierced with a harpoon or by a knife, as long as the nervous centre is not ouched.”

A Norwegian Antarctic explorer, H. J. Bull, gives a startling word picture of a shark’s tenacity of life. This man-eater was caught at the Iceland cod-fishery: his liver, heart, and internal arrangements were removed, so as to put a period to his career, and the thus mutilated body was then cast into the sea. He simply gave a liesurely wag of his tail, and swam rapidly out of sight. The shark is comparatively clumsy in his movements, and is compelled to turn over in order to seize his prey and Ins many enemies are not slow in availing themselves of these peculiarities. In 1889 Captain Fraser, of .the barque Thomas S. Stowe, when one hundred miles west of the Galapagos Islands, caught a shark which had been carrying about in its body the weapons of offence of two swordfish. The latter class of sea-dwellers are plucky fighters, and occasionally break off their swords in the body of an opponent who would, perhaps, rather dee than fight. An early missionary to the South Sea Islands, a Mr Ellis, was journeying in an open boat, which was endangered by the unwelcome attentions of a ravenous shark. The shark seized tho blade of an oar and shook the keel of the boat in an effort to eaosize her. A boatman grasped the tail of tho finny enemy; the other members of the coloured crew assisted in dragging tho shark into the boat, where lias was dispatched. A shark once served as a policeman, even, perhaps, against his will. In 170?) the brig Nancy was captured by a British warship as a suspected slaver, and her release by the prize court at Jamaica where she had been brought for trial, seemed inevitable owing to the absence of incriminatory documents Curiously enough, the officers of the Abergavenny hooked a shark soon aft-

cnvards in the neighbourhood, which '.v.is found to contain a bundle of papers relative to the Nancy. These were preserved in ignorance of the capture of the brig, and eventually led to her condemnation. Sharks often attain to great size on the coast of Southern California, in 1906 apparently the largest on record was dispatclied. He measured thirty-two feet from the tip of his tail to the end of his snout, and had a girth of fifteen feet just forward of his dorsal fin. Two children of about •hx years of ago were depicted sitting erect within the extended jaws of the slain shark, their logs dangling in mace.

Travellers’ talcs with respect to sharks (and the same may be said as co whales) will not stand the test of scientific analysis.—William Ailingham, in “Chambers’s Journal,”