By Henry M. Holden

In July 1916, the Matawan Library was listed closed for several months due to an influenza epidemic. So, what do people do for summertime activities? Escape the heat and humidity by heading for the famous Jersey shore and its cooling waters.

That month was to find five people victims of shark bites. A series of shark attacks along the New Jersey coast killed four people and critically injured one, sparking nationwide panic and reshaping public perception of sharks.

Between July 1 and July 12, 1916, five people were attacked by sharks along the Jersey Shore, with only one survivor. The attacks occurred during a heat wave and polio epidemic, which had driven large crowds to the beaches. The first attack took place on July 1 in Beach Haven, Long Beach Island, when Charles Vansant, a 23-year-old from Philadelphia, was fatally bitten while swimming with his dog. Vansant’s left thigh was stripped of flesh, and he bled to death shortly after being rescued.

The second attack occurred on July 6 in Spring Lake, 45 miles north of Beach Haven. Charles Bruder, a 27-year-old bellhop, was swimming over 100 yards from shore when a shark severed parts of both his legs, leading to his death en route to shore 

The final attacks happened on July 12 in Matawan Creek, a freshwater stream more than a mile from the nearest bay. Eleven-year-old Lester Stillwell was killed, and two men attempting to rescue him were also fatally attacked. A teenage boy was injured but survived.  Two days later, fishermen killed a shark believed to be responsible, reportedly containing human flesh in its stomach. 

Scientists still debate the species and scientific Impact. Scholars debate whether the attacks were caused by a great white shark or a bull shark, with some suggesting multiple sharks may have been involved in it. The attacks challenged contemporary scientific beliefs, as sharks were previously thought to pose little threat to humans. Ichthyologists reassessed shark behavior, and the events influenced shark research and public awareness.

The public reaction and cultural legacy is still with us more than 100 years later. The attacks caused widespread panic, leading to shark hunts and bounties offered by the New Jersey governor. Beaches were temporarily enclosed with steel nets, and tourism suffered significant losses. 

 The events entered American popular culture, inspiring Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws and subsequent film adaptations, cementing the image of sharks as dangerous predators .

The 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks remain a landmark event in American history, notable for their rarity, severity, and lasting impact on public perception of sharks. They highlighted the need for improved beach safety and reshaped both scientific understanding and cultural portrayals of sharks 

Between July 1 and 12, 1916, five people were attacked along the coast of New Jersey by sharks; only one of the victims survived—a child. The first major attack occurred on Saturday, July 1 at Beach Haven, a resort town established on Long Beach Island off the southern coast of New Jersey. Charles Epting Vansant, 23, of Matawan was on vacation at the Engleside H Matawan Hotel with his family. Before dinner, Vansant decided to take a quick swim in the Atlantic with a Chesapeake Bay Retriever that was playing on the beach. Shortly after entering the water, Vansant began shouting. Bathers believed he was calling the dog, but a shark was actually biting Vansant’s legs. He was rescued by lifeguard Alexander Ott and bystander Sheridan Taylor, who claimed the shark followed him to shore as they pulled the bleeding Vansant from the water. Vansant’s left thigh was stripped of its flesh; he bled to death on the manager’s desk of the Engleside Hotel at 6:45 PM.

Despite the Vansant attack, beaches along the Jersey Shore remained open. Sightings of large sharks swimming off the coast of New Jersey were reported by sea captains entering the ports of Newark and New York City but were dismissed. The second major attack occurred on Thursday, July 6, 1916, at the resort town of Spring Lake, New Jersey, 45 miles north of Beach Haven. The victim was Charles Bruder, 27, a Swiss bell captain at the Essex & Sussex Hotel. Bruder was attacked while swimming 130 yards from shore. A shark bit his abdomen and severed his legs; Bruder’s blood turned the water red. After hearing screams, a woman notified two lifeguards that a canoe with a red hull had capsized and was floating at the water’s surface. Lifeguards Chris Anderson and George White rowed to Bruder in a lifeboat and realized he had been bitten by a shark. They pulled him from the water, but he bled to death on the way to shore. According to The New York Times, “women [were] panic-stricken [and fainted] as [Bruder’s] mutilated body … [was] brought ashore.” Guests and workers at the Essex & Sussex and neighboring hotels raised money for Bruder’s mother in Switzerland.

The next three attacks took place in Matawan Creek near the town of Keyport on Wednesday, July 12. Located 30 mile north of Spring Lake and inland of Raritan Bay, Matawan resembled a Midwestern town rather than an Atlantic beach resort. Matawan’s location made it an unlikely site for interactions between sharks and humans. When Thomas Cottrell, a sea captain and Matawan resident, spotted an 8-foot-long shark in the creek, the town dismissed him. Around 2:00 PM a group of local boys, including young Lester Stillwell, 11, were playing in the creek together. One of the boys had brought along his pet dog, which was swimming with them as well. At an area called “Wyckoff Dock” they saw what appeared to be an “old, black weather-beaten board or a weathered log. 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.

The boys ran to town for help, and several men, including local businessman Watson Stanley Fisher, 24, came to investigate. Fisher and others dove into the creek to find Stillwell, thinking he had suffered a seizure. After locating the boy’s body and attempting to return to shore, Fisher was also bitten by the shark in front of the townspeople, losing Stillwell in the process. His right thigh was severely injured and he bled to death at Monmouth Memorial Hospital in Long Branch at 5:30 PM. Stillwell’s body was recovered 150 feet upstream from the Wyckoff dock on July 14.

The fifth and final victim, Joseph Dunn, 14, of New York City was attacked a half mile from the Wyckoff dock nearly 30 minutes after the fatal attacks on Stillwell and Fisher. The shark bit his left leg, stripping it of flesh, but Dunn was rescued by his brother and friend after a vicious tug-of-war battle with the shark. Dunn told the press that he felt his leg going down the shark’s throat, “I believe it would have swallowed me.” Dunn was taken to Saint Peter’s University Hospital in New Brunswick; he recovered from the bite and was released on September 15, 1916. Shark sightings increased along the Mid-Atlantic Coast following the attacks. On July 8, armed motorboats patrolling the beach at Spring Creek chased an animal they thought to be a shark, and Asbury Park‘s Asbury Avenue Beach was closed after lifeguard Benjamin Everingham claimed to have beaten away a 12-foot-long shark with an oar. Sharks were spotted near Bayonne, New Jersey, Rocky Point, New York; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Jacksonville, Florida; and Mobile, Alabama, and a columnist from Field & Stream captured a sandbar shark in the surf at Beach Haven.

Actress Gertrude Hoffmann was swimming at the Coney Island beach shortly after the Matawan fatalities when she claimed to have encountered a shark. The New York Times noted that Hoffman “had the presence of mind to remember that she had read in the Times that a bather can scare away a shark by splashing, and she beat up the water furiously.” Hoffman was certain she was going to be devoured by the “Jersey man-eater” but later admitted she was “not sure … whether she had her trouble for nothing or had barely escaped death.”

Local New Jersey governments tried to protect bathers and the economy from man-eating sharks. The Fourth Avenue Beach at Asbury Park was enclosed with a steel-wire-mesh fence and patrolled by armed motorboats; it remained the only beach open following the Everingham incident. After the attacks on Stilwell, Fisher, and Dunn, residents of Matawan lined Matawan Creek with nets and detonated dynamite in an attempt to catch and kill the shark. Matawan mayor Arris B. Henderson ordered the Matawan Journal to print wanted posters offering a $100 reward ($3,000 in 2025 dollars) to anyone who killed a shark in the creek. Despite these efforts, no sharks were captured or killed in Matawan Creek.

Resort communities along the Jersey Shore petitioned the federal government to aid local efforts to protect beaches and hunt sharks. The House of Representatives appropriated $5,000 ($150,000 in 2025 dollars) for eradicating the New Jersey shark threat, and President Woodrow Wilson scheduled a meeting with his Cabinet to discuss the fatal attacks. Treasury secretary William Gibbs McAdoo suggested that the Coast Guard be mobilized to patrol the Jersey Shore and protect sun bathers. Shark hunts ensued across the coasts of New Jersey and New York. As the Atlanta Constitution reported on July 14, “Armed shark hunters in motor boats patrolled the New York and New Jersey coasts today while others lined the beaches in a concerted effort to exterminate the man-eaters …” New Jersey governor James Fairman Fielder and local municipalities offered bounties to individuals hunting sharks. Hundreds of sharks were captured on the East Coast due to the attacks. The East Coast shark hunt has been described as “the largest scale animal hunt in history.”

After the second incident, scientists and the public began presenting theories to explain which species of shark was responsible for the Jersey Shore attacks or whether multiple sharks were involved.

Some scientists believe that a northward swimming shark was responsible. They believed it would eventually arrive along New York’s coast: “Unless the shark came through the Harbor and went through the north through Hell Gate and Long Island Sound, it was presumed it would swim along the South Shore of Long Island and the first deep water inlet it reaches will be the Jamaica Bay.

Before 1916, American scholars doubted that sharks would fatally wound a living person in the temperate waters of the northeastern United States without provocation. One skeptical scientist wrote, “There is a great difference between being attacked by a shark and being bitten by one.” He believed that sharks tangled in fishing nets or feeding on carrion might accidentally bite a nearby human. In 1891, millionaire banker and adventurer Identifying the “Jersey man-eater.”

In 1891 millionaire Herman Oelirich offered a $500 reward in the New York Sun “for an authenticated case of a man having been attacked by a shark in [the] temperate waters” north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. He wanted proof that “in temperate waters even one man, woman, or child, while alive, was ever attacked by a shark.” The reward went unclaimed and scientists remained convinced that the upper eastern coast of the United States was inhabited by harmless sharks.

More than 100 years has passed, and the scientist have living proof that all sharks are dangerous and given the opportunity will kill for their meal.  Florida remains one of the most shark-attack prone U.S. states with recent incidents reported across the coastline and hot spots like New Smyrna Beach, Pensacola, Panama Beach and the Florida Keys. From March 2016 through June 2013 there were 10 shark attacks in Florida with the most serious being hand bitten off and serious pelvic and abdominal injuries and lower arm amputated.