150 Man and Shark 



The first two, pioneer underwater craft, were retired without having 

 achieved much of a record. The next two Sharks vanished on patrol dur- 

 ing World War II. The sixth Shark, an atomic-powered submarine, was 

 launched in 1960. 



Sharks appear in several British coats-of-arms." 



Sir Brook Watson, Alderman of London, lost a leg from the bite of a 

 shark in the harbor of Havana. The incident was magnificently portrayed 

 by the painter John Singleton Copley in his famed "Watson and the 

 Shark." But that wasn't enough for Watson. Created baronet in 1803, he 

 assumed for a crest a demi-triton, grasping a trident and repelling a 

 shark in the act of seizing its prey. The crest of the family of Aiolton 

 has a shark's head regardant, swallowing a Negro. A similar crest was 

 granted to the Garmston family. A shark issuant regardant, swallowing 

 a man, is the crest of the family of Yeates of Ireland. Argent, three dog- 

 fish in pale sable, are the arms of the family of Gesse. Dogfish also appear 

 in the arms of the family of Malvish. A demi- (or half) dogfish sable 

 is the crest of the family of Meer of Dorsetshire. 



A shark posing as a mermaid guards the little town of Bregenz, Aus- 

 tria, on the shore of Lake Constance. How it got there, no one knows. 

 The mermaid hangs in an archway. Legend says she has been hanging 

 there since the thirteenth century when Bregenz was suff^ering from al- 

 most constant sieges by German armies and an almost continual series of 

 plagues. 



One day a fisherman drew in his net at Lake Constance and found a 

 mermaid. He was going to throw her back when a voice from the lake 

 cried out: "Take my daughter and hang her in the Arch of Martinster. 

 She is begat of a land woman and is of no use here." 



Fearing to disobey the Spirit of the Lake, the fisherman followed the 

 eerie command. The next morning, the mermaid was found dead. In 

 her struggles, she had twisted into a grotesque shape. Her death, ac- 

 cording to the legend, resulted in a century of peace and prosperity for 

 Bregenz. 



The mermaid, still frozen in her death throes, hangs in the archway 

 Ooday. She is a shark. Dr. Denys W. Tucker, formerly of the British 

 Museum (Natural History), in correspondence with one of the authors, 

 tentatively identified the mermaid, from a photograph, as a mummified 

 Porbeagle shark. Did it come from Lake Constance? That possibility 

 is as unlikely as the mermaid legend. But to this day no one knows how a 

 shark, and a mummified one at that, came to be hung from an arch in an 

 Austrian town so far from the sea. 



2 Sharks and rays also are found on postage stamps of French Somaliland, Ifni, 

 Eritrea, Tristan da Cunha, Gibraltar, Spanish Guinea, and Kenya. 



