Captain Shark-Killer 63 



I have known the shark in many seas, but I do not know the shark. No one 

 does. After havang hunted him, killed him and found uses for his products 

 throughout the world, I do feel qualified to talk about him. (I know that a 

 shark should properly be addressed as it, but to me the shark will always be a 

 he, for he has as much character and personality as any man I have ever met.) 



As I sit here in my snug harbor in Miami, writing my Log of time past, 

 the memories of thousands of sharks parade through my mind. Most of them 

 are dead. Some may still be alive, for no one knows for sure the lifespan of a 

 shark. Others live in a curious way: in the sharkskin shoes I wear; in the 

 mementoes that surround me— the dried gaping jaws, the thousands of teeth I 

 have fashioned into jewelry to sell to tourists; the film I once made; in my 

 book, Shark! Shark/^, published decades ago; and now these leaves from my 

 shark-hunting Log: 



Honolulu 



This is where it all began, where the shark and I first met in combat. The 

 Islands were quiet then, and life was simple. It was 1900, and Pearl Harbor was 

 not vet a name that would live in infamy. Sailing vessels filled the harbor, and 

 one motorboat, a 22-footer with a 4-horsepower gasoline engine, chugged 

 around. That boat, the Billy, the first motorboat to enter Pearl Harbor, be- 

 longed to my brother Herb and me. (I still have a piece of the red-white-and- 

 blue ribbon that was stretched across the harbor the day it opened.) 



Soon we were prospering. We bought several other boats for a variety of 

 jobs— diving and salvage work, running passengers from ships to shore, carrying 

 pilots, customs officials and immigration inspectors to incoming ships. We had 

 come a long way from those first days when all Young Brothers, Ltd., did was 

 haul garbage out to sea. 



And always there were sharks. '"''Mano! Afawo.'— Shark! Shark!" the Kanakas 

 would call as they spotted the sharks circling around ships in the offshore 

 anchorage awaiting the free meals the ship provided when garbage was thrown 

 overboard. Often the clear water was alive with hungry sharks. 



As I watched the shark-swirled waters one day from the deck of my boat, 

 I was seized by a sudden, overpowering desire to catch a shark. 



I told one of the English-speaking Kanakas aboard that I wanted to catch 

 a shark. "Mano?" he asked, looking at me curiously. "Yes, 7nano,'" I replied. 

 The Kanaka disappeared in the direction of the galley and soon returned with 

 a big piece of salt pork, a stout line and a great hook. He was jabbering excitedly. 

 ''''Hana paa mano— we'll catch a shark! He is much ivikj ivikj kau kau haole—he 

 will eat a white man, very, very quick! Pz/az/- rotten— he is no good!" 



He and another Kanaka dropped the baited hook over the side. The moment 

 it struck the water it was seized. Mano was hooked! One of the boys borrowed 

 a meat hook from the cook, got into a small boat alongside and hooked the 

 shark through the mouth. The line was run through a boat davit and hauled 

 up. The boat falls shivered as the shark thrashed at the end of the line. Quickly 



2 William E. Young, with Horace S. Mazet, Shark! Shark! The Thirty-Year 

 Odyssey of a Pioneer Shark Hunter (New York: Gotham House, 1934). 



