“The Bite Heard Round The World”

Charles Epting Vansant
(1892-1916)

Known As:

First victim of the 1916 Jersey Shore Shark Attacks that inspired JAWS

(click to enlarge)

South Section of
Laurel Hill Cemetery East
Section : 10
Plot: 153

Location:

It's 1916. The major issue on everyone's mind is the war that we have been fighting for two years now. History remembers it as World War I. Philadelphia has newly elected Mayor Thomas B. Smith (1869-1949) in City Hall. The Philadelphia Athletics played at Shibe Park and were considered one of the worst teams in the league that year.

The polio virus was running wild through big cities during a heat wave. Trying to get away from it, a lot of people flocked to the beautiful seaside resorts along the coast of New Jersey.

Six shark attacks on humans occurred between July 1st and July 12th. Only one person survived.

Charles Epting Vansant was born in Philadelphia on August 22, 1892. His father, Dr. Eugene L. Vansant (1859-1928) and his mother, Louisa Epting Vansant (1860-1940), had a total of 5 children. I know that sounds like a lot. However, all 5 children never lived under the same roof at the same time. Charles was born in 1892. Then came Mary Eugenia (1894-1954), Eugene Larue Vansant Jr. (1896-1896), Louise, who was known as “Lulu” (1898-1950), and finally Eleanor Larue (1906-1963). They lived at 1929 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Louisa Epting Vansant

Dr. Eugene L. Vansant

The Vansant Sisters
Loise, Elenore & Mary Eugenia (l-r)

Charles Epting Vansant

When Charles was 4 years old, tragedy struck the Vansant family for the first time. Newborn Eugene Larue Vansant Jr. passed away when he was only 3 ½ months old. A cause of death could not be found.

Charles Vansant, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, held a Broker position with Folwell Brothers Brokerage Firm in Philadelphia.

Wanting to get away for the holiday weekend, he and his family boarded a train in West Philadelphia and headed to Beach Haven, NJ.

When they arrived, The Vansant family checked into one of the fanciest Victorian Hotels on the island. The Engleside Hotel once stood at the end of Engleside Avenue. It was easily recognizable by the large open-air tower.

On Saturday, July 1st, Charles decided to have a quick dip in the ocean just before dinner. Accompanied by a dog that was playing on the beach, Vansant went into the water. From here, there are two different accounts that I uncovered.

Engleside Hotel 1916

Engleside Hotel 2023

Official Shark Attack Report

Shark Attack Location 2023

Shark Attack Location 1916

According to Wikipedia, not long after going into the water, Charles began shouting. Nearby bathers thought that he was simply playing with the dog. The shouting was actually Vansant's reaction to being bit by a shark. A passerby, Sheridan Taylor and lifeguard Alexander Ott rescued Vansant. Taylor claims that the shark was following him to shore as they pulled the bloodied Vansant from the water. Charles's left thigh was bitten and stripped of the flesh. It was on the manager's desk at the Engleside Hotel, where Vansant bled to death.

The official shark attack report, however, tells a slightly different story. According to the report, it was the beach goers that were shouting, not Vansant. The beach goers began shouting warnings from the shore as they saw a shark closing in on him. He was only able to move toward the shore by a few feet. It was when he was standing in the water, that the shark bit him. Alexander Ott raced to help Charles. Quickly, bystanders formed a human chain and they pulled Charles to shore. Another account recorded in the report states that the shark held on to Vansant's leg while he was being pulled in until they were in 18 inches of water.

The injury was recorded as “fatal”. Victim's upper left thigh was “denuded of flesh and his femoral artery was severed.” The cause of death reported on his death certificate was “hemorrhage from femoral artery, left side”. The contributory cause was recorded as “bitten by a shark while bathing”.

The shark attack report goes on to report details of the suspect shark. Eyewitnesses told the victim's father, Dr. Eugene L. Vansant, that the shark was “nine feet in length, weighed about 500 pounds and was black in color”. It was believed that this was the work of a Great White.


Charles joined his brother, Eugene, in the family plot in the South Section at Laurel Hill East Cemetery. In time, they were joined by the rest of their family members starting in 1928 when their father Dr. Eugene L. Vansant passed, Mother Louisa Epting Vansant joined them next in 1940 followed by sisters, Louise Epting “Lulu” Vansant Esler in 1950, and Eleanor Larue Vansant in 1963.

The only member of the Vansant family not included in the family plot is Mary Eugenia Vansant Dillon. She is not far away though. She and her husband, Dr Edward Saunders Dillon (1890-1959), are interred just over the Schuylkill River at Laurel Hill West Cemetery, in the Franconia Section, Lot 529.

After the first attack, the press were reluctant to put fear into beach goers and reassured them that the man was bitten by accident. That the shark was likely trying to attack the dog, not him. They told the public that there should be no fear in swimming in the ocean. They did not see any reason to start a mass public panic. Ring a bell?

July 6th, Charles Bruder (1888-1916), 27, a Swiss bell captain at the Essex & Sussex Hotel was swimming 130 yards from shore. Suddenly, a shark severs his legs when he is bitten in the abdomen. After hearing the screams, lifeguards Captain George White and Chris Anderson row their life boat out there to see Bruder struggling to stay afloat and hear him yell “a shark bit my legs off”! White and Anderson pull him into their boat where Bruder passes out. The New York Times reports that as Bruder's mutilated body was brought on shore, women were panic-stricken and fainted.

It was not until after the second attack that the news outlets began to pick the story up. Reporters from all over the place flocked to the Jersey Shore to cover the story. The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Boston Herald, The Chicago Sun-Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Washington Post all ran the story on the front page of their papers.

July 12th, four young boys are swimming in a deeper part of the Matawan Creek in Monmouth County, New Jersey. One of the boys sees what he thought is an “old black weather-beaten board”. It is not a board. It is a shark. Then it attacks eleven-year old Lester Stillwell (1904-1916). The boys watch in horror as the shark pulls Stillwell under water. The boys run screaming for help. Stanley Fisher (24), Arthur Smith (51) and George Burlew (20) do not believe that the boy had been taken by a shark. Since Stillwell is an epileptic, they believe the boy must be having a seizure, and begin searching for the him in a row boat before diving in to the creek to search. After 60 minutes, the men grow tired and are sitting on a resting spot. When they spot the shadow of a shark in the water, they call off their search. As they re-enter the water to go home, the shark swims past Burlow and forcibly strikes Fisher on the right thigh. Using every ounce of his strength, Fisher punches and kicks the shark until it finally releases him. Fisher suffers a massive wound measuring 14 inches from just below his hip to just above the knee and a severed femoral artery. It would be two hours before they can get Fisher on the next train to the nearest hospital. By the time he reaches the operating room just before 8pm, it is far too long to save his life. Two days later, on July 14th, the body of Lester Stillwell is recovered 150 feet upstream.

July 12th, less than an hour after the fatal attacks on Stillwell and Fisher, a group of boys are swimming about 400 yards away from where the two boys were attacked. They are unaware of the attack while entering the water. When they hear about the attack that just took place, they do their best to get out of the water as quickly as they can. The last boy to try to get out is Joseph Dunn (14). While he is 10 feet from the shore, he looks down and sees something dark. He then feels a tug on his leg dragging him under water. His brother Michael, pulls Joseph out of the shark's mouth.

According to the shark attack report, Joseph is taken by motor boat to the site of the first attack where he is attended to by Dr. Herbert Sutherland Cooley (1873-1954), who reported that “the front and side of the boy’s lower left leg were cut to ribbons from knee to the ankle. The bones were not crushed and the main arteries in the calf of the leg were not cut.” Dunn is then taken to St. Peter's General Hospital where he spends 59 days recovering from a severely lacerated calf muscle.

Joseph Dunn (1902-1982) is the lone survivor of the 1916 Jersey Shore Shark Attacks. Despite giving a news reporter a brief interview on the way to the hospital, after his recovery, Joseph Dunn is never seen or heard from again in the public eye. It is as if he disappeared. He never gave another interview, never spoke about being involved in the most famous series of shark attacks in history. Thanks to a channel on You Tube known as Delaware History, one man set out to find out what ever happened to Joseph Dunn.

Word rapidly spreads of the attacks by phone, telegraph, postcards and letters. Panic sweeps the east coast quickly. These attacks paints sharks as deadly eating machines across the nation. They become the subject of editorial cartoons that make sharks THEE symbol for danger. With the new-found fear of swimming in the ocean, sunbathing declines by bout 75 percent. Resort owners along the Jersey Shore lose an estimated $250,000 ($7,000,000 by 2023 standards).

A total of six shark attacks on humans occur between July 1st and July 12th 1916 Only one person survived.

A wave of shark hunts begin with the goal to make “man-eating” sharks extinct, keeping the residents of seaside resort towns safe. Measures are taken to keep the public beaches free of sharks, including enclosing the beach with steel nets.

If this all sounds familiar, you're not wrong.

By the early 1970's the New Jersey Shark Attacks, along with the fear of swimming in the ocean are long forgotten. Novelist, Peter Benchley, comes across the story and thinks it can make a great novel. Inspired by the attacks, he writes a book wherein a Great White Shark terrorizes the fictional New England town of Amity. It becomes a best seller and gets the attention of a young movie director named Steven Spielberg, who turns it into a major motion picture we now know as JAWS.

Opening on June 20, 1975, “JAWS” earns $7,790,627 in it's opening weekend. It becomes the first film to earn $100 million at the box office, it becomes known as the first summer blockbuster and marks summer as the prime season for studios to release their biggest movies.

The film adaptation of Peter Benchley's best-selling novel has major cultural impacts that are still felt to this day. After the theatrical release of JAWS, sharks are forever seen as evil eating machines. The major decline in beach attendance in 1975 is quickly blamed on JAWS. The film also produces what is known as the “Jaws Effect”, where fishermen pile into boats killing thousands of sharks around the world, creating shark-fishing tournaments and creating fear that sharks would be put on the endangered list.

Both the film's director, Steven Spielberg and the novel's author, Peter Benchley state that both were a work a of fiction. They both regret the reputation it gives sharks. Benchley spends the rest of his life advocating for and protecting sharks until his death in 2006.

The film is entered into medical journals after causing at least one case of “cinematic neurosis”, where a 17-year-old girl shows signs of a mental health issues triggered by the film.

JAWS has had a huge impact on my life as well. It has become my favorite movie of all time. Once I got my hands on a copy of the novel, I couldn't put it down.

I grew up on this movie, and I still maintain that it is the greatest movie ever made. Not only because it is entertaining, but when you know the story of JAWS the way I have come to know it, it's inspiring. This movie hit every mark it was supposed to, despite the grueling time the cast and crew had during the filming. Because they were filming on the ocean, the saltwater made the mechanical shark break down all the time. Every person involved with this project always said the same thing “the shark never worked”. Because of that, Steven Spielberg was forced find creative ways to represent the shark.

The inconstancy of the mechanical shark proved to work in Spielberg's advantage. The shark only appears on screen for a total of 4 minutes during the 2 hours and 10 minute running time creating suspense throughout the film.

Although the barrels popping up to the surface was one of the successful ways to represent the shark, the most effective way proved to be the genius of Conductor John Williams who wrote the theme. That theme, no matter what situation you are in, causes fear even to this day to all that hear it. Even right now, as I am writing this, I am listing to the JAWS soundtrack.

When kids are young, we teach them what a cow says, what a chicken says and so on. I taught my daughter, Savanna, what a shark says: “duuuuudum, duuuuudum”. One time while visiting the aquarium, she was no more than 5 years old, my wife and I found her up against the glass of the shark tank trying to call them over saying “duuuudum, duuuuudm”.

I used to have this tradition. Every Spring, I would pull out the novel and read it up until the week before vacation. When I got through it, I would then watch the movie and head down the shore for a week. Both the novel and the film bring back such nostalgic memories, I can't help but smile when I speak of either one.

My uncle, Rich Wilhelm is a volunteer tour guide at the historic Laurel Hill Cemetery here in Philadelphia. Being ever curious, I took my oldest daughter, Brianna down to attend one of his tours many years ago. I found it fascinating. After the tour was over, he told us to stay behind a minute and took us to see a couple of things that were not on his tour that day but he thought we would be interested in. In a cemetery that is filled with amazing sculptures and million dollar mausoleums, he brought us to this small and simple headstone. Uncle Rich explained that this was the first victim in the 1916 Jersey Shore Attacks that inspired JAWS. I felt chills run down my spine.

This just proves the longevity that JAWS maintains. It was a headline and financial panic in 1916. That fear was reborn in pop-culture in 1975 that lasts to this day. I still hear people say they will not swim in the ocean because of JAWS. It made household names out of Peter Benchley, Steven Spielberg, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider.

None of the Vansant family would live to see the history-making, pop-culture phenomenon that all began with Charles Epting Vansant.

In the summer of 2023, Savanna was 13. We attended a special screening of JAWS at Laurel Hill Cemetery. The screen was set up in front of the Receiving Vault. On our way down there, we stopped and paid our respects to Charles Epting Vansant. He is is buried in the family plot. Section: 10 Plot: 151.

So the next time you are staring out at the ocean and thinking about JAWS, just remember, it all started right here in Philadelphia.