Show J 7 t f 1 rt i k j C C Ji i ff l A J i t 74 i yn i t 1 df t Y J t i l' l r tt i F l t r J t l I Ii D DO 0 S SHARKS I EAT HUMANS HUMANS' S. S 7 f HN i r or fr f n ri a. a N ns 9 0 Y odd i l t hy l r pr t. t r Kh sr a eF K p 5 v v r ll u n ds r tb S. S y p r. r l' l i t y t jl y E Et r rv xa d 5 H l y S 2 x MCW Sr l F 5 2 n vr ay f t s r JA f 4 sn n fF r s 53 F f s r q r l rr r rt iJ ti dT N 0 H r t J a Yr rt p y Nr tl t s r N r it S 'S t tI tx 4 S 'S rr x tv o y 2 M. M h e 1 tr tr'S I y d ri 9 9 f ft u r. r Fi c e r bY w p s T 4 3 off f a t j EK YG tar 1 l n r erg I k V It Y n Z w ry r N I 4 r Ap r h Yn n f Y r vt bF F 1 t. t ns n's d i iY Mf x ob sf tz r n t tY r G il Y x AF J Y r a r A ti qC gl What at Scientists Have t tto to 0 Say ay Ab About About U Uthe the to Reports sorts That at Passengers Attempting tin Escape e by Swimming From the Sinking Italian g f Steamship essa Mafalda a a a ar af r Were Victims o of Voracious Fish is DANCE TRANCE music is swinging out over an opal tropical sea The sky is dyed with dyed with all the splendor of a sunset on the ocean The great liner courses gallantly on throbbing in her white corridors on the I decks in her very vitals vitals vitals- the insistent reliable breathing of the ocean ocean steamship miniature cit city of the sea moving onward in her own own r kingdom There is is an air air of jollity aboard that atmosphere of happy excitement excitement excitement excite excite- ment which seizes hold of a ship when it is only twenty-four twenty hours away from port Passengers lean over the deck rails pointing out phantom land birds and lights in the dusk that may be of heaven n o or r of earth Peace beauty new ports new dreams ahead d Suddenly a crash a flare an explosion At once all is changed In a moment this idyll in a Southern sea is changed into a a pool in Dantes Dante's Inferno Who Vho can ever tell all that followed in the wake of that moment when a broken propeller gashed a death wound v into the side of the Italian liner Mafalda off the cc cast st of South America send send- I ing g her and of her her 1256 passengers to th the bottom of the sea r I IN N A moment the sea was filled with writhing agonized human beings Ships came swiftly to stand by galleries by-galleries galleries to watch as great a spectacle in human agony as ever men could look loot upon Lifeboats lifeboat Life life- Lifeboats boats boat were were launched from the the Mafalda only to sink under their own weight 7 While lifeboats from the other sl ships ps worked frantically in their labor of salvation salvation sal sal- men p passengers made human iY rafts to save others Women and children children children chil chil- dren s swam am frantically to them They clung to lifelines their weak fingers slipping sUpping from the slippery strands Night crept on and there was screaming scream screaming scream scream- amIng am- am ing in the midst of f the wind and darkness darkness darkness dark dark- ness from women and children helpless in the chun churning ng waters Now came thes the s searchlights from the rescuing ships A great roar rose up from these frenzied mortals They thought the ship was on p fire tire Y But there was aas as a horror still greater greiter than all an of this according to the tales of spectators who leaned out from deck rails on that to never-to-be-forgotten night Sharks darted into chose hose circles of ot light waiting to devour the frantic ones swimming for their lives Hungry mouths opened wide ide they leaped out of the darkness darkness dark dark- darkness ness waiting Y That these lead marine beasts h held ld in horror by man for centuries did de devour devour devour de- de some of the victims as t they ey struggled struggled struggled in the water was the contention of some of the onlookers One man claims to have saved the lite life of a man by focusing focusing focusing focus focus- ing the beam of Dt a powerful flashlight ht into the eyes of a pursuing shark But did the huge fierce sharks really pursue terrified passengers who attempted to escape by swimming from the sinking f Italian vessel Was this final horror adde on that terrible night or did the sharks m merely rely exist east In Jn the realms of ot overwrought overwrought over over- fF wrought Imaginations i For after all do sharks really eat i humans f i Since the sinking of the Mafalda William Beebe famous naturalist and director of tropical research of the New York Zoological Society has harpooned the legend that the shark is a killer an anone and andone andone d one of the dangerous denizens of the sea In spite of the hundreds of terrorizing stories concerning this toothed sharp-toothed beast of the sea and this last 0 o o. o i 2 topping all others in horror this scientist claims the shark except in rarest Instances to be as harmless as a minnow and he is able to prove what he contends by countless countless count count- less tales of how he has descended into veritable beds of man-eating man sharks with no further protection than thana a batI bathing ng suit and a divers diver's helmet only to ascend without without with with- out even a scratch or a qualm of fear tear in his heart I I have been down dow with a helmet more than a hundred times he tells Once an foot eighteen shark came within six feet of me Another time I counted sixteen six six- te teen n playing about me They are no more than minnows It is what I have always contended pART TABT ART of Mr Beebe's experiments were 4 made during the expedition of tho the Arcturus when he and l his s comrades set out to find the fabled Sargasso Sea Even more detailed experiments were made during his most recent trip to Haiti h had for one of its ts very objects this exploding exploding ex ex- exploding of the old centuries-old t terrorizing legend of th the shark During both these trips Mr Beebe cont contends contends con con- t tends oth other r members of the thc expedition besides l himself descended to a depth of fifteen or twenty feet in the water wearing wearing wearing wear wear- ing only the copper helmet and bathing suit while man eaters swam only a few feet away from them without attacking any of them He lIe explains that he has talked to men in iQ all parts of the world about sharks and his informers have owned up that most of the stories of t 10 y q r I x d I X vt 1 b yC CS s An CS k arL t r. r i r a Y r S ci Hand to encounter with a as r Ry E s shark h ark Enlarged Enlarged En ln from an original d film cutout fAyr 1 a k i r rr f r I 1 7 William Beebe director of tropical research of the New York Zoological Society ori on on the deck of his ship Arcturus with witha vitha a shark weighing pounds shark frightfulness have been built with the imagination It was virtually impossible according to the findings of tl tills this s famous explorer for forthe forthe forthe the maddened fright-maddened passengers of the Mafalda swimming so desperately for their lives to have been devoured by huge sharks The whole weight of scientific evidence throws itself against a catastrophe so pitiful and so complete There are not more than six cases on record where sharks have ever attacked human beings he explains and in each instance the case has been most The bodies had perhaps already been mutilated And even at that these six cases have been separated from each other by periods of many years There is only one killer among the man eating sharks according to the opinion of most scientists This is the great nosed blue-nosed shark and his range is the open sea of all the oceans But so rare is this monster that it Is doubtful if any museum in this this this' country has an adult specimen Two reasons have perpetuated the agonizing myth that this ancient beast of the sea is the fierce killer of the kingdoms kingdoms king king- kingdoms doms of green water One is his sinister r appearance In it it- it self The other according according- to Mr Beebe is the delight natives of tropical lands have taken in playing up or rather in living up to the average tourists tourist's notion of the ferociousness of the shark On one occasion he related I approached approached approached ap ap- ap- ap one of the pearl fishers of off the coast of Australia and asked him just justas as any casual tourist might how true the story was that sharks ate human beings Ills His answer amounted to Sure they eat cat them all up It happens all the time down here I turn turned d away a few moments and th then n approached l him m again Look here I said Im not just a tourist Im I'm a scientist looking for accurate ac accurate accurate ac- ac curate information I really want t to o know Then the grinning fisher for pearls owned up that he had never heard of a shark eating a man and had never me met t any anyone one who had Mr Beebe cannot explain why al although although although al- al though a shark will not attack a human huma n being he will savagely destroy one o ohis of f his own kind when it is in in trouble Swinging at the end of his ocean lin line e with that curious late invention for th the e sea explorer the copper helmet he witnessed witnessed witnessed wit wit- this curious drama under the rolling roIling billows Another member of the party let da daa down downa rn a shark hook One of ofa of a school of sharks was caught on this tillS Another shark which might have been its mate swam immediately immediately immediately im im- im- im mediately to the place and stripped the injured shark to pieces More than once the naturalist saw th this happen He was never quite able to vork work out the motive but it came to his mind that this may have been a way for the great fish to protect his own from the common enemy enemy man ERE is about as much chance for aman a aL aman THERE L man to be attacked by a shark a as s there is for tor the average person to be struck by lightning That is the way the danger is summed up b by Dr Frederick Freder ick A. A Lucas honorary director of the American Museum of Natural History in New York Not many years ago there were t two o frightful instances of deaths through t shark bites among bathers on the Jersey coast which seemed to contradict all th e I y y ya ro t a n 2 a As the Mafalda l a sank sharks d darted into those circles of light waiting to devour de your the frantic ones swimming swim swim- swimming ming for their lives a pile of evidence any scientists might gather up to the effect that the shark ii harmless At first it was thought that t one of the victims the son of a prominent Philadelphia Phila h delphia physician had l his his' s' s leg torn off Sir t by the attacking beast This seemed to l' l corroborate the old age-old legend that a shark could snap off the leg of a man manlike manlike manlike like a piece of tinder Later it was discovered discovered discovered dis dis- covered that the young mans man's leg had been badly mangled but not severed and that death had come through loss of ol Z blood It was contended by various scientists that the shark had bitten the boy rather than attacked him r At Dr Lucas pointed out that tha there Is a great difference in being attacked at attacked attacked at- at tacked by a shark and being bitten by one and that in cases cases' of shark bite it has usually been found due to some one who incautiously approached a s shark ark Impounded Impounded impounded Im Im- pounded or tangled in a net or gasping on the shore Under such circumstances any creature would bite It is possible the young men who met death accidentally collided with impounded impounded impounded im im- pounded sharks and gave the Impression that they were the attackers Such scientific philosophy was probably of small consolation to the families whose a adear dear ones met such frightful deaths but the point so far as scientific r research search is r a concerned is clearly dra drawn 11 Dr Lucas spent many years tracing to their sources stories concerning man man eat eat eat- ing sharks and invariably he found they were some of the many common varieties f that had irown grown in the popular Imagination tion from about eight feet to almost indefinite In Indefinite indefinite in- in definite proportions 1 In the rare cases over the length and andai breadth of ai the world where here death could really be traced to the shark it was where the scent of blood or of refuse had lured him first True to io habit the man cater was searching the sea for for- food As to the record of eyewitnesses of that fateful evening we lave have the account of the purser of the Mafalda Matalda Captain Carlo LongobardI the highest hIghe t ranking officer of the liner to escape the tragedy His words are In forty years of seafaring seafaring sea sea- i faring I have seen many ship shipwrecks never have ha I seen such magnificent self- self r ra sacrifice as I saw in the Mafalda disaster J But I do not believe any of the Mafalda's Mafalda's Mafalda's Ma- Ma faldas falda's passengers were passengers were eaten by sharks If so they were were on the opposite side of i the sl ship p from me mo During the war I I worl worked ed on sl ships ps cr cruising between en New NewYork NewYork York and Europe Almost a every very day the passengers thought they saw German sub sub- marines Yet I never saw a submarine I believe they existed mostly in the imagination imagination im int- of the tte passengers and sailors I believe it was the same same with the sharks said to have been swarming about the sinking Mafalda S SAnd And there are those who pray that the findings of scie science ce and the beliefs of the I purser of the sad gallant Mafalda ar art true C to by f Ft |