8 We Catch a Female Shark and I Learn About Women From Her
One of the earliest lessons that I learned from the sea was the importance of observation. Book learning is almost useless in a storm, and science an unknown quantity when the elements lash against a man-built ship. But observing the laws of the sea, watching it destroy or create, teaches much about life. All that I learned of philosophy, biology and astronomy came to me from my father and the sailors.
I often wondered where children came from, and in reply to my queries the sailors gave me no stork fable or yarn about being found in a cabbage patch. When I asked Father where I came from he replied:
“Don’t ask questions. Just keep your eyes open and you’ll find out everything you want to know.”
The first opportunity I had to find out about babies being born came when Father landed a shark. I was down on the main deck helping Stitches sew on a ripped sail. He was teaching me how to use the “palm” or sea-going thimble that sailors use when they sew canvas. The “palm” is a metal perforated disk set on a leather strap that fits the palm of the hand. In fair weather the sailors always brought the torn sails on deck and repaired them ready for emergency use in a storm. Stitches was very painstaking in his instruction to me because he wanted me to be a regular sailor some day.
Father was sitting on the taffrail, sextant in hand, waiting for the sun to come out from behind a cloud so that he could “shoot the sun,” or take a sight to figure out our position by navigation.
“Say, Joan,” he called, “come here and look at this shark.”
I dropped my sewing and ran up to the poop to the after rail. I looked over the stern and saw a greenish white shadow deep in the water. Slowly the shadow came closer to the surface and a grey fin stuck out of the water like a three-cornered sail. The shark was about ten feet long. It swam around in circles following in our wake, stalking us. It was the first time I had ever seen a man-eating shark.
“Don’t go too near the rail, Joan. If you fall overboard now you’ll be a nice dessert for that shark.”
“Do sharks eat people?” I asked.
“That kind of a shark does. All sharks that live on the surface of the water and follow sailing ships are man-eaters.”
I looked at the shark again. It looked harmless to me as it circled and played around in the wake from our rudder.
“How could a shark eat me? I can’t see any mouth on it,” I countered, still unconvinced.
“I’ll show you. Go ask the cook for a big chunk of salt pork, and we’ll put it on an iron hook, then watch the fun.”
I got the chunk of salt pork and Father baited a hook with it. Instead of lowering the hook overboard by a rope, he fastened a thin chain about twenty feet long onto it.
“Now get my rifle, and stand clear of the rail,” he ordered.
I brought the gun up, and Stitches and McLean came aft to help land the shark. Stitches tied a piece of board on the chain so that the pork and hook would float on the surface. The shark, led by its little vari-colored pilot fish, smelled at the bait—then it circled away. It came back again and after pushing the pork with its snout, the shark turned belly up, and opened its jaws on the meat. A shark can only bite when it is bottom up, as the lower part of its jaw is receding. As it turned up and snagged the hook Father shot at his throat with his rifle. The shark kicked out with its powerful tail and pulled away. McLean let out some slack as the shark started to bite viciously at the chain holding the hook. Again and again Father fired shots into its body, but still it fought. The pilot fish had disappeared—nothing remained but a bleeding, fighting shark pulling at the hook.
“Haul him up, head out of water,” Father called, and as Stitches and McLean pulled him out of the water Father slipped a running bowline around him.
“Get the hell out of the way now or you’ll get hurt,” he called to me as he hauled the heavy shark up by the bowline. Stitches had slipped another line around the shark’s pounding tail and was pulling him up by the stern. After a terrific struggle they landed him on the poop deck. It slapped and wallowed around the deck, its huge jaws with seven rows of saw-teeth gaping and trying to kill its attackers. Father ran a scantline down its throat and shot it again. McLean chopped its tail off, splintering its spine as he did so. Still the shark fought desperately. Nothing seemed to kill it.
“A shark don’t die until sundown,” said my father, “but we can cut him up so he can’t do any damage. Only don’t get too near him because he may only be foxing. A shark is the hardest deep sea thing to kill there is.”
Father told the men to haul the body of the shark down on the main deck and leave it in the lee scuppers until it died. The sailors were more than willing to comply because a shark has a lot of value to sailormen.
“When it’s dead, you men skin it. We’ll sell the skin in Australia for shoe leather. Whatever else you want of the shark you can have,” he told the men, and he went about his task of “shooting the sun.”
I forgot all about my sail sewing lesson in the excitement of carving up a man-eating shark. Stitches sharpened my knife for me on his marlin spike, and we set about carving up the shark.
“What part can I do?” I asked him.
“Well, seeing as this is the first man-eating shark you ever seen caught, you go through its guts. Some sailors tell as how sharks swallow pearls on the bottom of the ocean, and maybe if you was to carefully go through all its entrails you might find a pearl.”
It is true that sharks are the scavengers of the underseas, but Stitches gave me the job of looking through its guts to initiate me into the realm of sharkdom. “Nothing like learning the insides of things to be sure of your facts,” he said.
I am glad now that he made me go through that shark’s insides for it gave me first hand information that has backed me up when landlubbers doubt me when I tell them of the mammal shark.
It took about three hours to go carefully through the yards and yards of gut of that shark and I didn’t find any pearls. All I found was a rusty piece of tin and a small devil fish, or octopus, that spit indigo ink all over me when I freed it from the grip of the shark.
“I’m goin’ to cut out this backbone, Skipper, and make a walking stick out of it. I can sell it when I get ashore for a bottle of rum,” said Stitches, and he dug his knife into the back of the shark. The shark still quivered, hacked up as it was.
“And now let’s get his ugly mug off his body. His yawnin’ jaws look too hungry for comfort.” McLean got an ax and a saw, and the two of them sawed and hacked off the huge iron-like head.
“Now I’ll show you where the shark keeps his eyes.” You see, a shark is blind, it can only see about four inches in front of its snout. Every shark has two little parasite fish, pilot fish, that see for it, and in time of trouble the shark swallows its pilot fish for protection. Down in little sockets behind the shark’s gills, Stitches brought out two squirming, brightly colored fish, about three inches long.
People have often asked me how it is that natives seem to swim unharmed in shark-infested waters. They escape from death because they know a shark’s habits. A shark, by reason of its near-sightedness, depends upon its pilot fish to spot food for it. The tiny fish can see any animate object in the water and head for it. The bright color of their bodies shines in front of the shark who follows where they lead. A shark will not attack an inanimate object for it cannot notice it! A moving object in the water attracts attention and the natives, wise to this, let their bodies go limp when a shark circles too near them. Then, when a shark circles to turn around to attack, the native moves like lightning to dive under the animal and rip its throat with his sharp tortoise-shell knife.
“Now always remember, Skipper, if you ever are overboard and near a shark, keep your head and keep quiet until the shark circles from you. Don’t be a landlubber fool and try to fight because that just makes you a movin’ target fer the little pilot fish.” I have been laughed at when I have told about the pilot fish of a shark, and unbelievers have said it was just a good fish yarn, but nevertheless it is a fact.
“Do any other kind of fish eat you, too?” I asked, a bit worried.
“Hell, a shark ain’t a fish, it’s a mammal—just like a porpoise and a whale is a mammal.”
A shark not a fish? It had fins and a body and tail like one and it doesn’t have to come up to the surface to breathe like a porpoise and a whale.
“Now you take that shark jaw and hang it over the side in the water and in a week all the meat will rot off it; then you’ll have a pair of fine shark’s jaws to hang up in your cabin.”
No portion of that shark was to be wasted. McLean had taken the empty gut and had stretched it out in the sun to dry. “For shoelaces” he answered, when I asked him what he was keeping it for.
“But it stinks,” I protested.
“Well, it won’t when I cure it in salt,” he replied.
“Now we’ll cut its stomach open, Skipper,” said Stitches and he slit up the upper stomach of the mutilated shark. I bent over him, carefully watching everything he did, for wonders never ceased to come from it.
Stitches reached his hand and wrist into the opening and felt inside. Then he let forth a “Jesus!”
“What’s the matter, Stitches?”
“Skipper,” he replied, his face crestfallen, “this is a mother shark. Look, she has young ’uns in her.”
I looked, and there in a pouch in her stomach were six baby sharks, about eighteen inches long. He reached in deeper and brought out a second pouch with another litter of six young in it.
“Is it bad luck to kill a she-shark, Stitches?” I asked, puzzled at his sudden grief.
“Bad luck? No sailor ever kills a female thing, because they give life. Givin’ life is part of the Creator’s job, and no man would willingly kill a mother thing.”
There is an old superstition that to kill any female thing at sea will bring a curse on the ship. If a female bird is killed, its wing is nailed on the mast head as an offering against a curse. When Stitches saw we had killed a mother shark in young, he took the tail and nailed it on the end of the jib boom. That is the reason why ships returning from deep sea voyages are often decorated with parts of birds or fish.
After Stitches had put up the tail on the jib boom, he came back to the shark. “Maybe we can save these young ’uns, Skipper.” Carefully, and almost tenderly, he took the baby fish out of the pouch and broke the cords that bound them to the mother shark. Then he took some twine that he had been using to sew sails with, and tied up the end of each cord, and threw the little fish overboard. They probably never lived but Stitches did everything in his power to save them.
I didn’t know that sharks bore their young. I supposed they laid spawn as any other fish did, but Stitches explained to me that a shark bears her children like a human, and suckles them from a teat until they can forage for their own food. The reason that shark had fought so viciously was to protect the young in her. A male shark is much easier to land, and much more stupid than a female.
I asked Stitches if all children were born the way the sharks were and he answered, yes.
As there were eleven children in our family I thought that we came in batches of six like the sharks.
“But how do we get in the pouches?” I insisted.
“The guy that created you put the seed of you under your father’s and your mother’s heart, then when they fell in love you was born.”
I have since learned that some modern naturalists who evidently never have traveled further south than Sandy Hook, have expressed a doubt as to whether there really is such a beast as a man-eating shark and whether it will actually attack a man unprovoked. Evidence, they claim, has always been at second-hand and the testimony of seafaring men they reject. Well, without wishing to lock horns with the learned, you may be interested in firsthand evidence of man-eating sharks.
I saw a nurse shark, perhaps the deadliest species of the shark family, attack a sailor from our ship, one Eric Johanssen. Johanssen dived off the ship for a swim against the express command of my father that no member of the crew leave the vessel. We were anchored in Paramatta River in Sydney Harbor. Johanssen hadn’t been in the water five minutes before two sharks began circling about him.
“You bloody fool, swim for the ship,” called Swede to Johanssen. Johanssen turned to strike out for the Jacob’s ladder, but he wasn’t swift enough. The tri-cornered fin of the biggest shark followed in his wake. Johanssen struck out wildly with his arms and legs. He evidently thought that by making a big splash in the water he would confuse the shark, but the disturbance Johanssen kicked up only served to make an accurate target for the shark’s pilot fish.
The man had about reached the ship when the triangular fin following disappeared. Watching, the men on board knew what that meant. The brute was turning on its back. It came up below its prey and turned open its huge maw to bite.
There came a short shriek of pain; the water bloodied, and Johanssen’s body doubled up. The shark’s jaws had set about his stomach. With a sinuous motion of its tail the shark drew away taking in its jaws the middle of Johanssen’s body almost through to the backbone.
There had been no time to lower a boat, but Swede was on the Jacob’s ladder; Father and the mate above, all the boathooks fighting to save at least the body from the man-eaters. They caught the body with their hooks and brought it out, but not until another hunk of flesh had been torn from the thigh. Then the vicious monsters, balked of their complete meal, swam along the sides of the ship, scraping against it and slapping their tails against the hull as though in a frenzy of rage. Finally they drew off, but for hours they swam close by, waiting for another victim.
Father had Johanssen’s body sewn up in sailcloth and it was buried in the potter’s field in Sydney.
Stitches told me of a foolhardy sailor in the islands dragging his arm over the side of a dinghy going ashore. A nurse shark came up unexpectedly and caught the trailing arm. The sailor either was dragged, or in his fright fell out of the boat. There was a swirl of bloody water and the man was gone. Then, attracted by the blood another huge shark came alongside and scraped the dinghy trying to overturn it. Stitches and the remaining sailor had a hard time getting the boat safely ashore.
Such are the habits of man-eating sharks.
shark with pilot fish
girl covered in tar with laughing men around her