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'Jaws' Was Inspired By The Matawan Man-Eater
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Mar 31, 2025
There's no denying that the movie Jaws definitely made some beach-goers scared to go into the water. However, the story that inspired Jaws was what really had people scared to have a day at the beach. The Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 were so unexpected, sudden, and violent that they stuck in the public's mind even up to the point that the movie hit theaters. The "Matawan man-eater," as the shark was called, took down at least three people before the killings finally stopped, and it forever changed the public's view of sharks.
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Few films have had as much cultural impact as Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic thriller Jaws
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Much like the pivotal scene in 1960's Psycho made showers a new source of anxiety
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Jaws led many viewers to fear going into the ocean. After all, when you enter the ocean, you're entering the food chain
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And in case you think it's safe to go back in the water, you should know that the events of the film are loosely based on real-life shark attacks that occurred over a hundred years ago
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Today on Scream to Scream, we brave the murky depths of the Jersey Shore shark attacks of
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1916 and how they later inspired one of the highest grossing horror films of all time
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which set the template for many subsequent films based on man-eating animals released
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through the 1970s and 1980s. The Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 were a series of fatal shark attacks along the coast
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of New Jersey between July 1st and 12th, 1916, in which four people were killed and one injured
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The incidents occurred during a deadly summer heat wave and a polio epidemic in the United States
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that drove thousands of people to the seaside resorts of the Jersey Shore. Since 1916
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scholars have debated which shark species was responsible and the number of animals involved
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with the great white shark and the bull shark most frequently cited as the culprits
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The first major attack occurred at a resort town established on Long Beach Island off the southern coast of New Jersey called Beach Haven
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Charles Epting Van Sant was on vacation at the Engleside Hotel with his family when he decided to take a quick swim in the Atlantic with a Chesapeake Bay retriever before dinner one night
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Shortly after entering the water, however, Van Sant began shouting in terror
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Other beachgoers believed he was calling out to the dog before quickly discovering a shark was biting his legs
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He was rescued by lifeguard Alexander Ott and bystander Sheridan Taylor, who claimed the shark followed him to shore as they pulled the bleeding Van Sant from the water, his left thigh stripped of flesh
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Van Sant tragically bled to death on the manager's desk of the Ingleside Hotel later that evening
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Despite Van Sant's untimely death, beaches along the Jersey Shore remained open
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Sightings of large sharks swimming off the coast that were reported by sea captains entering the ports of Newark and New York City were dismissed
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The second major attack occurred just five days later at the resort town of Spring Lake, New Jersey, 45 miles north of Beach Haven
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The victim, a 27-year-old Swiss bell captain at the Essex and Sussex Hotel by the name of Charles Bruder, was attacked while swimming 130 yards from shore
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A shark bit him in the abdomen and severed his legs, turning the water in the surrounding area red with Bruder's blood
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After hearing screams a woman notified two lifeguards that a canoe with a red hull had capsized and floated just at the water surface Lifeguards Chris Anderson and George White pulled Bruder into a lifeboat but couldn reach shore before the young man succumbed to his wounds and bled to death on the boat
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The next two major attacks took place in Matawan Creek, near the town of Keyport, six days after Bruder met his demise
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Matawan's location, 30 miles north of Spring Lake and inland of Raritan Bay
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made it an unlikely sight for interactions between sharks and humans. So when sea captain and Matawan resident Thomas Cottrell reported an eight-foot-long shark in the creek, his claims were also dismissed
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Later that afternoon, a group of local boys, including 11-year-old Lester Stilwell, were playing in the creek together at an area called Wyckoff Dock
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when they saw what appeared to be an old black weather-beaten board or weathered log in the water
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However, a dorsal fin appearing in the water revealed that the log was actually a shark
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and Stilwell was pulled underwater before he could climb out of the creek to safety
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Once the other boys ran to town for help, local businessman Watson Stanley Fisher
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and several other men dove into the creek to attempt to rescue Stilwell
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After locating his body and attempting to return to shore, Fisher was also bitten by the shark in front of the townspeople
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losing Stilwell in the process. His right thigh was severely injured, and he bled to death at the nearby hospital later that evening
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Stillwell's body was ultimately recovered 150 feet upstream two days later. The fifth and final victim, 14-year-old Joseph Dunn, was attacked a half-mile from the Wyckoff
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dock nearly 30 minutes after the fatal attacks on Stillwell and Fisher. The shark bit his left leg
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but the young teen was rescued by his brother and a friend after a vicious tug-of-war battle
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with the shark. Dunn was rushed to a hospital in New Brunswick and recovered from the bite
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two months later. As the national media descended on Beach Haven, Spring Lake, and Matawan
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the Jersey Shore attacks sparked a shark panic. Sharks had previously been seen as harmless
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but the pendulum of public opinion following the Jersey Shore attacks of 1916 swung to the other
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extreme, and sharks quickly came to be viewed not only as eating machines, but also as fearless
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ruthless killers. Personal and national reaction to the fatalities triggered a wave of terror that led to shark hunts
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aimed at eradicating the population of man-eating sharks and protecting the economies of New Jersey's seaside communities
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Resort towns enclosed their public beaches with steel nets to protect swimmers
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Scientific knowledge about sharks before 1916 was based on conjecture and speculation
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with the attacks forcing ichthyologists to reassess common beliefs about the abilities of sharks
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and the nature of shark attacks. Shark sightings increased along the mid-Atlantic coast following
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the attacks. On July 8, 1916, armed motorboats patrolling the beach at Spring Creek chased
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an animal they thought to be a shark And Asbury Park 4th Avenue beach closed after a lifeguard claimed to have fought off a 12 shark with an oar New Jersey local governments made efforts to protect bathers and
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the economy from man-eating sharks. The 4th Avenue Beach was enclosed with a steel wire mesh fence
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and patrolled by armed motorboats. After the attacks on Stilwell, Fisher, and Dunn, residents
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of Matawan lined Matawan Creek with nets and detonated dynamite in an attempt to catch and
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killed a shark. Matawan Mayor Aris B. Henderson ordered the local paper to print wanted posters
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offering a $100 reward, which would be valued at about $2,400 today to anyone who killed a shark
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in the creek. Despite the town's efforts, no sharks were captured or killed in Matawan Creek
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Resort communities along the Jersey Shore petitioned the federal government to aid
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local efforts to protect beaches and hunt sharks. The House of Representatives appropriated $5,000
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for eradicating the New Jersey shark threat, and President Woodrow Wilson scheduled a meeting with his cabinet
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to discuss the fatal attacks. Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo suggested that the Coast Guard be mobilized
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to patrol the Jersey Shore and protect sunbathers, and shark hunts ensued across the coasts
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of New Jersey and New York. Hundreds of sharks were captured as a result
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and the East Coast shark hunt has been described as the largest-scale animal hunt in history
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After the second incident, scientists and the public began presenting theories to explain which species of shark was responsible for the attacks, or whether multiple sharks were involved
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Scientists Frederick Augustus Lucas and John Treadwell Nichols first proposed the idea that a northward-swimming rogue shark was the culprit
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Several fishermen claimed to have caught the Jersey man-eater in the days following the attacks
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A sea captain who witnessed the Beach Haven fatality believed it to be a Spanish shark driven from the Caribbean Sea decades earlier by bombings during the Spanish-American War
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A blue shark was captured about a week after the attacks near Long Beach, and four days later, the same Thomas Cottrell who'd seen the shark in Matawan Creek claimed to have captured a sandbar shark with a gill net near the mouth of the creek
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On July 14th, Harlem taxidermist and Barnum & Bailey lion tamer Michael Schleiser caught a seven-and-a-half-foot shark while fishing in Raritan Bay, only a few miles from the mouth of Monawan Creek
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The shark nearly sank the boat before Schleiser killed it with a broken oar
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When he opened the shark's belly, he removed a suspicious fleshy material and bones that took about two-thirds of a milk crate and together weighed 15 pounds
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scientists identified the shark as a young great white and the ingested remains as human no further
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attacks were reported along the Jersey Shore in the summer of 1916 after the capture of Schleiser's
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great white shark and scientists declared it to be the Jersey man although some skeptics have surfaced offering their interpretations and theories to the man culprit The casualties of the 1916 attacks are still listed in the international shark attack file as victims of a great white
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Before it became a cinematic classic with a killer score by the incomparable John Williams
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Jaws began as a 1974 novel by Peter Benchley about a rogue great white shark
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that terrorizes the fictional Long Island coastal community of Amity. Benchley had a longtime fascination with sharks
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which he frequently encountered while fishing with his father in Nantucket, and took inspiration from the 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks
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His story is very similar to the real-life events, with a vacation beach town on the Atlantic coast being haunted by a killer shark
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and locals eventually being commissioned to hunt down and kill the shark or sharks responsible
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Based on Peter Benchley's 1974 novel of the same name, and filmed on location on Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts
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Jaws was the first major motion picture to be shot on the ocean, and resultantly had a troubled production, going over budget and past schedule
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As the art department's mechanical sharks often malfunctioned, Spielberg decided to mostly suggest the shark's presence
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employing an ominous minimalist theme created by composer John Williams to indicate its impending appearances
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For the screen adaptation, Spielberg wanted to stay with the novel's basic plot, but discarded many of Benchley's subplots
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Benchley himself wrote the first three drafts of the screenplay before handing it over to other writers
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He returned to the project during production to play a small, on-screen role as a reporter
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Jaws was the prototypical summer blockbuster, regarded as a watershed moment in motion picture history
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playing a major role in establishing summer as the prime season for the release of the studio's biggest box office contenders
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and was the highest grossing film in cinematic history at the time of its release
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But it wasn't without its repercussions. While in theaters, the film was said to have caused a single case of cinematic neurosis
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in a 17-year-old female viewer. Cinematic neurosis is a condition in which viewers exhibit mental health disturbances
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or the worsening of existing mental health disturbances, after viewing a film
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This case study caused the film to become notable in the medical community for causing stress reactions in its viewers
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The film Jaws is still seen as responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes about sharks and their behavior
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and for producing the so-called Jaws effect, which allegedly inspired legions of fishermen to kill thousands of the ocean predators in shark fishing tournaments
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Benchley stated that he would not have written the original novel had he known what sharks are really like in the wild
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And conservation groups have aired grievances that the film made it considerably harder to convince the public that sharks should be protected