I love the Oelrichs story too, Jim...and would particularly like to know what sharks it was he allegedly scared off in the open-water man v. shark show down he staged (that was Oelrichs, wasn't it, and not one of his followers?). My money is on blues, given the location. He may have been fortunate in the timing of his little exploit - the elegant blue shark is not counted as a man eater but (as with most sharks) it should be treated with respect. I've heard accounts from people doing the now-popular cage blue shark cage diving who have noted that their mood can change, and go from a fairly mellow cruise to rapid moving agitation. It also doesn't help matters that the odd short-fin mako may show up - not a shark I'd like to mess with in open water. I heard them once described as being 'like a shark on speed', and it's apt.
I inadvertantly left bulls off my list, but you're right - they're one of the most underestimated of sharks. I'm one who believes that the Mattawan Creek attacks in 1916 were the work of one (or possibly more than one) bull sharks - I don't buy the single rampaging little great white theory at all, and side with shark researchers like Richard Ellis on the issue.
I'm glad you didn't see any of the big boys brought in during that sorry period of unrestrained shark killing - it's not an attractive or edifying site. One disturbing childhood sight involved own to my local beach to find shark entrails and parts strewn all over the natural rock platform - one of the neighbours had killed and hacked up a shark for the jaws. Not sure what (if it was a Grey Nurse/Sand Tiger, he was killing what was then an already protected species). On another occasion, another neighbour and my younger brother hooked a juvenile tiger - hauled it in and gutted it.
Did you see the photos of the massive 1,100 lb tiger shark caught in July during the annual 'Monster Shark' fishing competition of Martha's Vineyard this year? The previous year there was a spectacular female Mako caught. I do
not like such competitions (although I support spearfishing for food), but at least I understand they make scientific use of the specimens caught.
Sharks are not random killers, and the 'feeding frenzy' is a rather over-rated event. Some years ago footage was shown in Oz of a great white feeding on a large elephant seal carcasse. The news voiceover described the shark as being in a 'feeding frenzy', when it was quite clearly simply eating. The thrashing motion it made once it had its jaws on a lump of flesh was simply to use its teeth in a sawing motion. I've even done the odd dive where sharks have been brought in with bait (a controversial practice), and far from snapping at anything in site, they were clearly focussed purely on the food. The sharks were much 'better' behaved than the potato groupers in once such dive, and once the food was gone, they dispersed.
Sharks are curious animals, and would be interested in unusual objects in their environment. They are also, however, cautious (not 'cowardly', as Oelrichs believed). I've watched them underwater slipping just in and out of the edge of vision, keeping pace in the blue. If you attempt to approach, they will maintain the same distance.
In the event of a shipwreck, I would think they'd be more inclined to hang off and observe, before coming in and bumping, nudging and 'mouthing'. It is survivors who are in the tropical waters for hours or days who are at the most risk. Unfortunately, injuries and erratic swimming movements on the surface may well attract sharks if they are in the area. I wouldn't want to be stranded on the surface overnight off, say, Queensland, and yet one survivor of the
Quetta lasted more than a day. In a more recent case where three survivors found themselves in the water after their yacht sank near the Barrier Reef, two crewmen were picked off by a stalking tiger shark before the third made it to safety. In temperate water, exposure would be a much greater concern than shark attack.
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2) Sharks were presumed in the early years of the 20th century to be much more carnivorous than the actually are.
Depends a bit on where/who you were. Australians, for example, were well-acquainted with shark attacks, and I imagine South Africans were as well. Sailors, too, knew about the dangers of sharks (Moody mentioned several showing up after he and some crewmen had gone for a swim in a South American port...he concluded that he didn't think he'd be doing any more swimming).
I haven't read the Fernicola book, but the Capuzzo book dealing with the same subject downplayed the sharks reputation for ferocity pre-1916. He did acknowledge that sailors and people living in some coastal regions (e.g. Oz) were aware of the dangers some sharks posed, but that the general attitude was that they were cowardly and not a potential threat. I'm not entirely sure of that - material I've read seems to indicate that the shark had a reputation for being a voracious feeding machine that would eat anything (an idea that persists today, in spite of the fact that not all sharks are opportunistic omnivors, and many are specialised feeders). Writers like Herman Melville had already introduced them to readers as voracious, frightening eating machines.
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But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will not answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather round the moored carcase, that were he left so for six hours, say, on a stretch, little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning. In most other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so largely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably diminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades, a procedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to tickle them into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the present case with the Pequod's sharks; though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed to such sights, to have looked over her side that night, would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it.
Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper was concluded; and when, accordingly Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades,* kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks, by striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other's disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.
