Daily inter mountain., 1899-08-04
THE TIGER OF THE OCEAN

SNo'e VI years, ana never gwen cause
Tor man to call you a coward, there
comes a time when you feel the creeps,
and your knees grow weak" said man
VINO was whaler once. THAT time is
When you look over the rail Of a ship ris-
ins ana railing on a calm sea and find a
Dig hammerhead shark looking up into
your eyes. The white shark Is voracious
| ana merciless, but the tiger of the sea- as
| the hammerhead is called, is worse than
| that. He is the most repulsive-looking
llsh that swms. He will take up the
tran OF ship like bloodhound, and his
perslstency is menacing and malignant
"A white shark can be frightened or beat
en- OF, even after seizing his prey, but the
| nammerehead shuts his jaws like bull
| uos ana Will be cut to pieces before he
VIII let go. A man in the water may
oooge the rush of white shark, but the
t,ser never misses his mark. He hasn't
the speed OF the other, but it is his slower
salt winch makes him more certain of his
victim.
WI nile the hammerhead shark may be
caught along the Atlantic coast his true
cruising grounds are in the tropical seas
To get among the big ones you must voy-
age up the Bay Of Bengal or coast along
the great barrier reef of Australia. One
day. as the ship White Wings was be-
Gained about fifty miles off the coast of
Madagascar, a hammerhead shark of
such size appeared alongside that he was
at first taken for whale. He remained
with us for over an hour, lying like log
! on the water, and it was easy to get his
dimensions. or at least his length. He
was exactly 33 feet long and about the
size of flour barrel. If a towlne could
nave been made fast to that fish he had
! the horsepower to enable him to drag
us along.
I'm his native element big shark has
Two sorts of power-the go-ahead and
the reverse. Off the Java coast, on one
of my whaling voyages, we killed a
whale % feet long. In bulk it seemed to
be an island. and his weight was tons
ADDED to tons. In perfectly calm sea
! three boats made fast to tow the whale
down to the ship. We had been strain
lng our backs for five minutes and hadn't
got the great bulk moving yet, when a
hammerhead shark about twenty feet
long dashed in and set his jaws into the
body just forward Of the tail AS he got
firm hold he began pulling back and
shaking his head, as you have seen dog
pull at root when digging. AS the flesh
would not tear away, that shark kept
reversing his engines until he had turned
the big body twice around in circle,
and added to the weight Of the body was
the drag of our three boats. To get rid
OF him we had to almost cut him into
strips with our harpoons.
Il have known white shark to fol-
low the ship for twenty-four hours, but
never longer. By that time his hunger
drives him to go cruising around after
food. While the Paul Jones was work.
ing along the Java coast a big hammer
head fell in with us one day and stuck
by us for eight days and a half, without
changing his position three feet. During
that time we sailed $50 miles. None of us
could figure out how the shark got any
thing tn a that fiyno nd
matter of fact, | don't believe he got a
morsel. The idea of shark following
ship for food thrown overheard is a false
one. / have seen the cook throw sops
over when sharks We're following or
skulking under the counter, and they
ated to be so feet long followed the Eng
lish ship Red Lion 2,1sO miles on a voy-
age to Australia. Food was thrown to
him twenty different times, but he would
not touch it, The white shark of the
tropical seas displays more fierceness
than those of the Atlantic, but he is a
sheep compared to the hammerhead. In
the year 1871 the brig Southern Cross
from Calcutta to London, was wrecked
on Nelson Island, at the northern end of
the Indian Ocean. She had three passen-
gers and crew of fourteen men. They
put off from the wreck on a raft, but the
wind blew them out to sea instead Of
by hammerhead sharks, and by sum
down, when it was sighted by north
bound craft, only one of the seventeen
castaways was left. The sharks could
not upset the raft, but they leaped upon
it, sometimes two or three at once, and
knocked the people overheard
'In the year 1882, while we We're land
ing some cattle from a coaster in Port
land Bay, Australia, the sling broke and
large Devon bull fell into the water.
This was about a half mile from the
beach and in water fifteen feet deep. The
bull started for shore, but a hammer
head shark seized him by the right hip
about IA feet long and the bull was
strong enough to have pulled a tree up
by the roots, and yet the shark began
towing him out to sea. We beat him
with boathooks, stabbed him knives, and
fired six bullets into him from a revolver,
but he wouldn't let go; Then we fast
ened a towrOpe to the horns of the bull
and towed him to the beach, and the
shark came with him and was killed with
an ak on the sands. The flesh was not
badly torn, but at the end of a couple of
days the bull was dead.
For good many years the ZoOlog-
cal Gardens at Bombay We're seeking for
a specimen hammerhead. The price Of
fered was liberal enough, and scores of
them were caught with hooks, but none
lived beyond a few hours. 1t was finally
discovered that the laceration of the
throat by the hook bled them to death.
Then native of one of the Caroline Is
lands put the officials upon a dodge and
a craft was fitted out and sent down the
coast to Little George Island When she
had come to anchor in a little bay men
were sent ashore to cut and bring off
ten long slim poles. These were fastened
loosely together after being spread four
1eet apart rms gave them raft 40 feet
VIDE by 10 feet long. Then ropes from 10
10 oo 1eet long. and about twenty lengths