A frightful fish story

Here’s a new book you can sink your teeth into, about the United States’ first experience with shark hysteria 85 summers ago. Just don’t go near the water.

By JEANNE MALMGREN

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 8, 2001

Talk about good beach reading. Just in time for the summer gulf swimming season, here comes Close to Shore: A True Story of Terror in an Age of Innocence.

This newly published book will give you:

• A. an appreciation for the noble quirks of the late Victorian era;
• B. a brainful of facts about shark anatomy and behavior, and
• C. a healthy fear of going in the water.

During the summer of 1916, just before the United States entered World War I, a hungry great white shark terrorized the beaches of New Jersey, killing and maiming several swimmers in one week, including a boy playing in a tidal creek 11 miles inland.

Those first recorded shark attack deaths created a mass panic that swept up and down the Northeast coast. Demure women in long dresses swooned as chewed-up bodies were dragged onshore by rescuers. Elegant seaside resort hotels emptied. Researchers struggled to understand what was happening, with only the limited knowledge of early 1900s science to guide them.

Close to Shore, the book that documents it all, is touted as a cross between Ragtime and Jaws. It's part historical thriller, part blockbuster shark tale. As you read, you can almost hear the familiar DUH-duh-DUH-duh theme song in your head.

Author Michael Capuzzo, 44, is a former newspaper writer and syndicated columnist who, until now, wrote books about cuddlier animals: domestic cats and dogs. Several years ago, he was doing research for a novel when he stumbled upon historical accounts of that summer of terror on New Jersey beaches, just a short drive from his home in the Philadelphia suburbs.

"I'm like, "What? ... And they happened right here?' The feature writer in me got excited," he said.

Capuzzo spent two years meticulously researching sharks and U.S. history from the early 20th century. He hung out in Gainesville with biologist George Burgess, who records and analyzes shark attacks as director of the International Shark Attack File.

Capuzzo haunted aquariums and historical museums. He pored over history books, science texts and yellowed 1916-vintage clippings from dozens of newspapers, including the New York Times and the Asbury (N.J.) Park Press.

To draw a portrait of Charles Vansant, a 22-year-old textile salesman, wealthy doctor's son and the shark's first victim, Capuzzo read every word of every issue of the University of Pennsylvania campus newspaper published during Vansant's four years as a student. "It was six weeks at the archives, for about three paragraphs" in the book, Capuzzo said last week from his 10-acre farm. "But it informed the whole character."

Capuzzo first honed his reporting skills in the early '80s at the Miami Herald's Key West bureau.

"I miss Florida and the good stories there," he said.

Then he spent several years as a feature writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer and wrote a nationally syndicated column called "Wild Things." In 1995, Capuzzo left the newspaper business to write books. One was a compilation of stories about pets submitted by readers of his column. Another, called Mutts: America's Dogs, which he co-authored, was a guide to mixed-breed canines.

Somewhere along the way, Capuzzo developed an interest in history, which blossoms in Close to Shore.

"I could spend the rest of my life writing books just about that one year, 1916," he said.

There was an innocence among the late Victorians, Capuzzo said, which fed the fear during that summer of shark hysteria.

"At first they thought it was a giant sea turtle or a swordfish attacking the swimmers. They didn't even know sharks could behave that way."

Capuzzo said he hopes Close to Shore not only draws a portrait of an interesting period of American history but also explores the nature of fear. He calls the book "a prequel to Jaws, in its own odd way."

"Anybody writing these kinds of thrillers is dealing with a predator, whether a killer or a man-eating shark."

When Capuzzo and his agent were ready to market Close to Shore to publishers, Capuzzo wrote a 100-page book proposal -- quite long, by publishing standards. Not to worry. Most of the large New York publishing houses bid for the rights to Close to Shore.

The winner: Broadway Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell. The price: "Close to a million," Capuzzo said. The frosting on the cake: Several Hollywood producers are considering the book for a possible movie.

Capuzzo's book tour for Close to Shore kicks off Thursday morning with a television appearance on Today. Then he'll visit bookstores in several cities and, of course, up and down the New Jersey shore, where the killer great white roamed 85 summers ago.

One enterprising Barnes & Noble bookstore there will have a small shark in a tank when Capuzzo turns up to sign books. He doesn't plan to stick his hand in the water.

So did they ever find the suspect shark featured in Capuzzo's book? One clue: Just don't read the ending while floating on a raft in the gulf.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.