06 Oct 2014
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"219887","attributes":{"class":"media-image size-full wp-image-2169","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"450","height":"373","title":"A Youth Rescued from a Shark - National Maritime Museum","alt":"Print, A Youth Rescued from a Shark"}}]] A Youth Rescued from a Shark (NMM PAH7458)
Let’s begin with the gore and the drama: A print entitled A Youth Rescued from a Shark (PAH7458) shows a young man desperately flailing in the water next to a boat, with an enormous if somewhat ludicrous-looking shark about to strike at him. The boat’s crew are engaged in different rescue attempts or looking on in grief and horror. The print is based on John Singleton Copley’s painting Watson and the Shark (1778), which in turn is based on a run-in with a shark the then 14-year-old cabin boy Brook Watson had while bathing in Havana harbour in 1749. Watson lost his leg but lived to tell the tale, and to become Lord Mayor of London and a baronet, but this is not obvious from the painting: the boy is eternally suspended between life and death, between the helping hands of his shipmates and the gaping jaws of the shark, and this uncertainty adds to the terrifying effect on the viewer. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the first instance of the depiction of a ‘shark attack’ in Western visual art, and I agree with Dean Crawford that already the shark is depicted as a “malevolent force” or a “creature from Hell”, not simply as a “fish going about [its] business of prowling for and gobbling other marine life” (Crawford 2008, 70-71). The print, which highlights the rescue in its title, does away with the ambiguity of the situation, but the caption takes care to emphasize “the Jaws of the voracious Animal”. Here, we may see the incipient demonization of the shark.
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"219890","attributes":{"class":"media-image size-full wp-image-2174 ","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"450","height":"644","title":"Crew of the ","alt":"Crew of the "}}]] Crew of the 'Carinthia' with a captured shark (NMM P83480)
Another item is also a visual depiction: a photograph from the 1920s or 30s of a group of off-duty crew from the Cunard Line passenger ship Carinthia, posing on deck with a captured shark (P83480). Here, the story is quite a different one: the shark is lying on the deck, bound with a rope behind its pectoral fins, with one man pulling up its snout to reveal its jaws; there is not a single tooth in sight. I’m not a biologist or veterinarian, so can’t give a meaningful opinion of whether the shark is dead, but it looks fairly miserable. At least ten men are standing around it in a half circle, with more lingering in the background. The men are mostly smiling or grinning, some are looking slightly apprehensive. I don’t mean to go on about the ethical questionability of posing for fun with a dead or dying animal that has been caught for sport – the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there, and they certainly haven’t heard of shark conservation – but I would really like to know what these men in the photo are thinking. Are they so pleased with themselves because they have conquered a mighty monster of the deep, or are they just grateful for the break from routine?
Then, of course, there are all the items incorporating shark products. On the one hand, there are traditional weapons such as an eighteenth-century shark tooth dagger from Hawaii (AAA3098), two nineteenth-century shark tooth daggers from Tuvalu (AAA2980 and AAA2981) and parts of a shark tooth lacerator from Kiribati (ZBA5530).
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"219888","attributes":{"class":"media-image size-full wp-image-2170","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"450","height":"121","title":"Shark","alt":"Shark"}}]] Shark's tooth dagger (NMM AAA2981)
Sharks are highly respected, even revered, and extremely significant in all these cultures, and none of them traditionally uses sharks in an exploitative way.
However – there are also items of European provenance that use parts of sharks: two nineteenth-century walking sticks with shark vertebrae (AAA0027 and AAA0028), several eighteenth- and nineteenth-century swords with hilts or scabbards covered in sharkskin, telescopes covered with sharkskin (e.g. AST0938) or in sharkskin cases and, most strangely, a pocket watch adorned with a shark-tooth pendant, once in the possession of Nelson’s Thomas Hardy (JEW0029).
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"219889","attributes":{"class":"media-image size-full wp-image-2171","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"450","height":"427","title":"Watch formerly owned by Thomas Hardy (NMM JEW0029)","alt":"Watch formerly owned by Thomas Hardy"}}]] Watch formerly owned by Thomas Hardy (NMM JEW0029)
The walking sticks were made by sailors in their leisure time, so probably do not quite count, but sharkskin was a major fashion item in the eighteenth- and nineteenth centuries, used for luxury products. Certainly, sharks were not exploited nearly as much as today, but even then, the relationship between them and humans was uneasy. I leave it to you to decide who was the predator and who the prey.
Recommended further reading:
Peter Benchley. Shark Trouble: True Stories (2002) – The author of Jaws turned shark conservationist in later life and wrote this book to make amends for the hideous misconceptions about sharks he had helped to establish.
Susan Casey. The Devil’s Teeth: The True Story of Great White Sharks (2005) – No, the title does not refer to the sharks, but the location.
Dean Crawford. Shark (2008) – Part of Reaktion Books’ brilliant Animal series.
Juliet Eilperin. Shark: Travels through a Hidden World (2011).
Richard Peirce. Sharks in British Waters (2008; 2nd ed. 2011).
This guest post was written by Lena Moser, who is studying for a PhD at the University of Tübingen. She has also written posts for our Board of Longitude blog on ships' masters and Trinity House.