STRUCK BY A SHARK

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 50, 23 November 1926, Page 8

STRUCK BY A SHARK

BOATSWAIN OF TAHITI INJURED

SEVERE WOUNDS ON HEAD

EXTRAORDINARY HAPPENING AT RAROTONGA

Passengers by the Tahiti, which arrived at Wellington yesterday morning from San Francisco, via ports, were treated to an exciting shark episode while the vessel wks at Rarotonga. A nine-foot shark, which was hauled up on to the foredeck of the liner, after a fierce fight for half an hour, had its revenge by striking Boatswain William Banks a crashing blow on the head with its tail, inflicting two ugly wounds, necessitaing surgical treatment, and stretching him out on the deck in a dazed condition.

About 6.30 p.m. on Monday of last week a Rarotongan was fishing from his boat alongside the Tahiti, off Rarotonga, where the liner was loading fruit. The native hooked a nine-foot shark, and it dashed away with torpedo-like speed. lhe native, however, skilfully “played” his catch ntiii saved his rather light line from snapping. After half an hour’s excitement for a large number of onlookers on the Tahiti,- the Rarotongan got the shark near the surface. Boatswain Banks let down from the deck of the liner a 2-inch rope, with a running bowline, which he dexterously looped over the head oi the shark. The shark dived, but the line slipped along its body, tightening with the strain, and was quickly fastened securely above the tail. Some twenty pairs of hands’lent a willing pull on the rope, and slowly the struggling monster was hauled up on to the deck of the Tahiti. The boatswain, being an old sailing ship man, claimed the tail of the shark as his prize. It is the custom on wind-jammers to nail a shark’s tail out on the end of the bowsprit, presumably as a warning to other wolves of the deep. Banks thought that he would nail this shark’s tail in an elevated position on the foremast of the Tahiti. He stooped down to cut the shark’s tail off, but the next moment he was sprawling on his back with blood gushing from deep wounds on the top of his head and above his left eye as the result of a blow from the shark’s tiA.il* As Banks was dazed and evidently severely injured, Dr. T. J. Henry, the ship’s surgeon, who was at his dinner, was called upon for aid. He found that Banks had received a cut 4 inches long on the top of his head, which laid bare the skull, and another cut 2 inches long, and, also to the bone, just above the left eye, which was blackened. The wounds were too jagged to stitch, but after they had been dressed and bandaged the bleeding Yesterday Banks still had a black eve and sticking plaster along the top of his head (winch had the hair cut short around the wound), and another patch of sticking plaster over his left eye. He stated that all he remembered at the time was stooping over the shark and then a dazing blow on the head which “put him out.” The shark, which weighed about 2801 b., was soon killed, and the edible portions of the carcass were cut out and given - to the Rarotongan who hooked the monster. While fighting for its liberty in the water the shark almost capsized a native catamaran in which was a Rarotongan, who was endeavouring to harpoon the shark. The water all around was infested with sharks, dozens of which could be seen from the ship's deck, having been attracted by a bucket of galley refuse which had been thrown into the water. As sharks around Rarotonga do not draw the colour line, the native harpooner would have been snapped, up in an instant if he had been capsized. Banks’s chief complaint yesterday was that after all somebody else purloined the coveted tail of the shark. The boatswain of the Tahiti is widely known in Wellington, having been engaged in the San Francisco service for some three and a half years. Dr. Henrv stated to a* Dominion reporter that during his lengthy experience he had not seen or heard of such an episode as that at Rarotonga, . and Banks’s wounds were surprisingly severe.