154 Man and Shark 



At this point in Olson's testimony, according to the New York T'mies 

 account of the trial, Olson seemed about to say more. But, "to his evident 

 great disappointment," the Times reported, "Olson was not allowed to 

 tell of the ship's papers being found on the inside of a shark." 



Thus, the mystery of the shark of Recife was never cleared up, at 

 least publicly. There is no record of it, so far as the authors' researches 

 could determine, in newspaper files in Recife today. And there is no 

 record, other than the scant remarks in Wood's opening statement, in 

 the transcript of the trial. But, even with the shark as only a phantom 

 witness, the story of the Gladstone-Marina Quesada was put into the 

 record, along with many details of the German government's flagrant 

 violations of U.S. neutrality— and the four Hamburg-American executives 

 were found guilty. 



The Shark Arm. Mystery: A Sydney, Australia, fisherman named Al- 

 bert Hobson hauled up his fishing line, and lifted the curtain on the weird- 

 est murder drama Australia had even known. Hobson had set his bait 

 about a mile ofl^ Coogee— a popular Sydney bathing beach— on April 17th, 

 1935. Now it was the following morning and, when he pulled in his line, 

 he saw that he had caught not one, but two sharks. 



A small shark apparently had taken the bait during the night. Then, 

 not too long before Hobson arrived in his boat, a 14-foot Tiger shark 

 had nearly devoured the smaller one, whose remains were still on the 

 hook. The Tiger, still dangerously alive, had entangled itself in Hob- 

 son's line. Hobson and his brother Charles managed to get the big shark 

 ashore. With the help of spectators who had watched the capture from 

 the beach, the two brothers dragged the shark across a stretch of sand 

 to the Coogee Aquarium. By the time it was placed in the aquarium 

 pool, the shark looked more dead than alive. For 24 hours it lay in the 

 pool, apparently lifeless. Oxygen was pumped into the pool. This seemed 

 to help. By April 20th, two days after its capture, it was eating all the 

 fish thrown to it. 



Even in Sydney, where sharks have never been uncommon, the Tiger 

 in Coogee Aquarium was a mild sensation, and the exhibit was crowded 

 every day. Like a terrestrial tiger in a cage, the shark "stalked" from 

 one end of the pool to the other in an unceasing search for escape from 

 its prison. Then, on April 24th, the shark stopped eating. It began to 

 languish; it hardly moved. 



On April 25th, while 14 persons stood at the pool watching the list- 

 less shark, it suddenly came to life. It lashed the water with its tail. It 

 charged into the side of the pool. It rushed to the shallow end of the pool 

 and whirled about in eccentric circles. A brown, foul-smelling scum en- 

 veloped it. One of the spectators was standing about 10 feet from the 



