, 1886-10-08
sHARKlNe Al NANTUCKET.


An old skippe-'s Opinion = sharkinE
Parties-Getting a Bito.
Shaking is the summer craze at this
queer old ocean resort. Any n a
catch all the sharks he wants at Nam
tucket. Parties of visitors go out after
them each morning, and return late in
the afternoon. Ladies are very fond of
Shaking, and fish daily in their bright
holiday attire for them. In hauling in
a shark it is estimated that a woman can
pull about five pounds and scream 500
pounds, and shippers say she is a very
valuable member Of a boats crew.
"Yer see." explained an old captain-of
a shark boat the other day, "a Naotucket
shark never seen such a critter as a
woman got up in yer city style, and jest
lookin' at her in the bow of n boat.
shaking her parasol and lettin' of
screeches ter more'n beat a steam tug
whistle. sorter paralyzes Their shark and
he is willin' ter let yer do most anything
with him."
The Shaking parties all go to the
south side, or to the east end of the
island, where the best grounds are. They
take a car from this town on the little
rusty three-foot gauge Nantucket rail-
road and rumble and bound over the
twisted rails, which often make a rise
of several inches in a few feet, to Soon
sett, on the east end, where the Norcross
brothers have two whaleboats in which
to go through the surf to the fishing
grounds. They take the sharkers to the
deep water off Haulover, beyond the
great Saukaty lighthouse, and drop the
lines overheard. To catch a shark it is
necessary to have a long rope, bigger
than a clothes line, to which is knotted
= long-shanked, heavy hook, about
which string a lot of fat, luscious, round
clans. There is nothing that a shark
is so fond of as round clans, and when
he beholds a string of them dangling be-
fore his nose. all Invested of their shells,
which are rather d%yspeptic eating even
for a shark, he generously overlooks the
hook as an u%nimportant incident in the
spread. He takes right hold, and as he
swallows the big hook and then the
clans, and begins to reel in his end of
the rope with ultimate acquisitive inten-
tons on The boat and other parapher-
MALTA, the sudden sharp tug he gives
notifies the fishermen that they have got
a bite.
Then they begin to pull on their end
of the line, and the double i~n-gathering
process speedily brings the BOAT and the
shark to a point where they can scru-
tinize each other. Usually six or even
men p.- the rope, with one or two
ladies to help. A snaih .-i-rost plways.
after he has been hooked, rlgno
along through the water like a log, I'M
resistingly. There is no more sport in
him than in a Goldfish until he gets close
to the BOAT and can see the people in it.
Then he begins to make a fuss, dashing
hither and thither and splashing the
greenhi4ows into beaded foam. but his
struggles avail little. Quickly the boat
is pulled up to his furious front, and a
brawny sailor, standing on the prov,
brains him with a few blows from a
heavy club. After the shark has been
~butchered, his carcass is towed ashore
and left on the beach, and the party re-
turn through the surf to set their
hooks again. The bodies of sharks go
to the mills that make fertilizers. The
heads are saved, the teeth being ex-
tracted to be fashioned into delicate little
ornaments, set in gold, for ladies to
wear. The shores about Nantucket are
strewn with bleaching sharks heads.
Shaking parties ave been unusually
lucky this season. In one day one whale
boat party caught eight hat weighed
between 400 and 700 pounds each.-New
York Sun.