Posted on 08/31/2019 7:12:38 PM PDT by Capt. Tom
I thank Don Cuddy of the Standard Times, for putting me in contact with Martin Smith of Mattapoisett, at that time a 13 yr older and an eye witness to the events of that day. Martin was a summer neighbor of the Troys. Thanks Martin for giving me detailed information on the attack . -
An attitude of “shark attacks can’t happen up here” would have been prevalent along the beaches of New England in 1936. Hardly anyone would have known about the 1830 attack on Mr. Blaney in Massachusetts Bay. For that matter most people wouldn’t have knowledge of the fatal July, 1916 shark attacks in New Jersey either. Many people didn't learn about the 1916 fatal attacks in New Jersey until after the movie "JAWs" came out in 1975, and made the public shark conscious.
In 1936 Joseph Troy Jr. age 16, was living in the Dorchester section of Boston, on Talbot Ave.. He went to visit his uncle Fred, who had a summer home in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts on Euclid Ave. at Hollywood beach. On July 25th Troy and Walter Stiles, a friend of Troy’s uncle, were swimming"a baseball throw distance" off the end of the pier off Grand Ave. when the attack occured. (The newspaper accounts spell Walter’s last name as, S-t-y-l-e-s. Dr. Hugh M. Smith former Director of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries who investigated this 1936 shark attack, uses S-t-i-l-e-s in his investigative report.)
Between 3 - 4 PM, Stiles saw a shark suddenly appear next to Troy. The shark grabbed Troy by the left leg and pulled him underwater. Stiles was about 10 feet away and went to Troys assistance; diving down to try to help him. Ultimately he was able to get hold of Troy when the unconscious boy surfaced in a pool of blood. Stiles started towing Troy to shore while shouting for help. It appeared at first that people thought it was a hoax. Then they realized something was wrong, and thinking it was a possible drowning they telephoned for a local doctor. A shark attack is the last thing any bystander would expect to have happened. The words "shark attack" wouldn't be in anyone's vocablary in 1936.
Mr. Herbert Fisher, who had just came in from sailing, responded to Stiles cries for help, and rowed over to assist him. Fisher helped Stiles in getting Troy into the boat, and rowed them to shore. Troy was placed on a door and carried up to a car. Dr. Irving Tilden rushed Troy to St. Lukes Hospital in New Bedford, about 12 miles away.
The femoral artery had not been severed, but Troy’s left leg was mangled, and a piece of the leg "about the size of a 5 lb. roast beef was missing". A surgeon had finished amputating Troy’s leg; when Joseph’s condition worsened. Joseph passed away about 8:30 PM that evening.
Since this attack happened on the south west side of Cape Cod, the usual suspects would be a white, or possibly, but not likely, a tiger shark, Galeocerdo cuvier, or a mako, Isurus oxyrinchus.
Fisher, who rowed over to help, and Stiles,who was swimming with Joseph Troy got a good close-up look at the shark, which remained just a few yards away from them in the bloody water. Their descriptive testimony to Dr. Hugh Smith, who investigated the attack, would determine the size, and the attacking specie.
Walter Stiles and Herbert Fisher both told Dr. Hugh Smith that the shark was about 10-12 feet long. That established the sharks length . Stiles said the white sides abruptly changed to the top color, and the shark had an almost symmetrical tail. Both of those observations are characteristics of a white shark, and not characteristics of a tiger shark. Dr. Irving Tilden who drove Troy to the hospital, testified that the victims “skin edges were serrated as if cut off by a toothed object.” A mako's teeth are smooth edged teeth, and a white sharks teeth are serrated.. Dr. Hugh M. Smith, former Director of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, who did the investigation into Troy's death, concluded the shark involved was: "a man-eater (Carcharodon carcharias)”
From [Bigelow and Schroeder, 1948 p. 134.] - A fatal attack on a swimmer at Mattapoisett, on Buzzards Bay, on July 25, 1936, may also have been by a man-eater, though in this case the shark was driven away without being identified.
What Bigelow and Schroeder did not know in 1948, when they wrote the above, was that the attack on Joseph Troy had been investigated in 1936 by Dr. Hugh M. Smith, former Director of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. Dr Smith did the investigation at the request of E.W.Gudger-who was working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Dr. Smith gave his report to E.W Gudger in 1936, and concluded it was done by a man-eater (white shark), but the report gathered dust until it was published by E.W.Gudger in the American Midland Naturalist, - Nov.1950, after Bigelow and Schroeder had written their book. ~~~~~
Today, EMTs are quickly on the scene- especially with prompt cell phone calls being made from the location asking for help. If that shark attack on Joseph Troy Jr. happened today, I believe he would have survived; mainly because his femoral artery in the mangled leg was not severed.
Just some old background info. -Tom
Back in the Eighties, I was partying down in Point Judith with friends, and a crowd of people were talking excitedly out in the street. When we asked what was going on, they said someone had caught a white shark and it was at a dock up the street.
We went over to take a look, and by the time we got there, the shark had been completely butchered and the removed jaws were sitting on the sidewalk with a guy standing inside the bloody jaws! That was the first time I had ever seen with my own eyes anything like that, and I was able to examine it closely...the teeth were huge, and were obviously sharp enough to cut when I ran my finger lightly along the edge. Each tooth was just a bit smaller (by maybe a quarter to a third) than the triangle I could make with my thumb and forefinger from each hand held together to make a triangle.
Pretty amazing to see.
But what was equally impressive was a pectoral fin some Asian guy had finagled from the corpse...it was longer than my arm. He was sitting with it on the curb trying to saw through it with a huge knife with a round end, with no success. He would saw unsuccessfully for a minute, then using the curb next to him as a whet stone would try to put some kind of edge on it, and then would try again to saw. But that pectoral fin was enormous!
By the way, when we got there, the carcass was nowhere to be seen. Only the removed jaws and that pectoral fin! I always wondered if they just rolled the thing back into the water, or if someone had to tow it out somewhere...
Bull shark?
To get an idea of the effectiveness of a sharks jaws, take a piece of toast and take a full bite out of It, and look at the miniscule bite size a full grown human has.- Tom
There have not been verified catches of Bull sharks in Mass. including fishing tournaments.
Some shark species have been claimed to be bulls but IDS by knowledgeable people have found them to be other species. - Tom
I had read about the 1916 attacks, but have never read about this case. Interesting. I live hundreds of miles from the Ocean on the West coast so I don’t see it more than once a year if that.
But I do remember my late Father, a champion swimmer at high school in the 1930s, taking me swimming offshore when I was a boy. He taught me to swim well when I was very young, and we would go way out beyond the breakers and then swim about a quarter mile along the coast before coming back ashore.
I thought nothing of sharks in those days even though I spotted a few 3 foot sand sharks near shore a time or two. Then when the movie “Jaws” came out when I was 25 and everything changed. Not to mention all the Shark specials on TV since then. Now you couldn’t get to wade more than ankle deep in the Ocean.
The shark either came up Buzzards Bay or down the Cape Cod Canal. My guess is it came down the canal. That pier is in a straight line from the canal to the SW.
White sharks seem to be numerous off California. They were a protected species, but restrictions on taking them were relaxed five years ago. Apparently, sport fishermen can take them but commercial fisheries are still prohibited from doing so.
Thanks!! Still interested...if you recall we shared this interest not long ago!
Climate Change causing it ?
‘Climate change’ apparently has been going on for centuries to cause THIS
No doubt Jaws got into the thinking of many people.
One of the people we regularly took out on fishing charters was an avid diver who lived in Truro and dove in Provinceown.
He stopped diving there; when a few years ago he had a white shark glide by him while he was gathering lobsters.
He is doing his diving now in the winter months. -Tom
They rebounded in the area when Gov. Moonbeam protected the sea lions and seals. Now they are all over the place and are the natural food for shark. Hence, the increase in sharks.
rwood
Those 1916 shark attacks would not have made much of an impression on New Englanders because of limited coverage in the local papers beyond the immediate area that the newspapers covered.
In 1916 no TV, and not much radio information either.
Not like today where news from Florida and Texas is prominent, no matter where you live.-Tom
Oh Wow. I grew up in Detroit but Cape Cod was our summer vacation. I never went out as far as you did! That was before Jaws. Yet I spent the rest of those summers waterskiing in a lake. I just never would have gone out where you did to swim. Such courage.
Thank you!!
THANKS for the info.
Aside from the local press in NJ, only NYC & Boston newspapers spent much time covering the 1916 attacks in NJ.
Until today, even with my sincere interest in sharks, I’d NOT heard of the 1936 fatality.
Yours, TMN78247
I went to the cape every summer since high school for about 30 years.
I’ve never set foot in the North Atlantic. I hate the beach.
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