('ourtesy Boston Museum of Fine Arls 



THE FAMOUS PAINTING. ""WATSON AND THE SHARK," BY JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY, DEPICTS A 

 THRILLING RESCUE FROM A ""MAN-EATER" IN HAVANA HARBOR 



The subject of the picture (probably chosen by the artist to exhibit skill in portraying flesh tints under water) is a bathing 



accident not dissimilar to those recently recorded on the New Jersey coast. Brooke Watson, an American, who 



afterward became Lord Mayor of London, lived as a youth in Jamaica, and it was while bathing in these 



tropical waters that the gruesome encounter with the shark occurred. Watson escaped from the 



encounter with only the loss of a leg, owing to the heroic work of a boat's crew in the 



harbor, and the story goes that when as Lord Mayor he was questioned in after years 



about the loss, he delighted to mystify the inquirers by replying gleefully ''It was 



bit off"!" The original of this picture, painted in 1778, belongs to Lord 



Aberdare; a duplicate is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts 



340 



