ATTACKED BY SHARK.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2400, 4 March 1922, Page 3

ATTACKED BY SHARK.

DARING RESCUE EFFECTED. RESCUED MAN’S STORY. Sydney, March 3. Another surf sensation has occurred at Coogee. Mervyn Gannon, aged 21 years, was bathing waist deep within twenty feet of the shore, when he was attacked by a shark, which tore off his right hand. His agonised cries caused a general stampede from the water. Jack Brown, a beach inspector, dashed to the rescue of Gannon, who was fighting the shark off, but when he reached Gannon the shark again attacked him, tearing off the fingers of the victim’s left hand. It also tore his back and shoulder to the waist, and ripped his stomach. Brown stuck to his man, however, and brought him ashore with the assistance of another surfer named Ernest Carr. Gannon was taken to hospital, where he lies in a critical condition. Gannon’s version after he was sent to hospital was, that/he saw a shark ten yards awa'y. “It rushed at me,” he said, “and I managed to jump on it. Like a flash it slithered under me. I tried to punch it away, and it. bit off my right hand. It came again, and I tried punching it with my left hand, but it got me again. Then Brown and another chap reached me. We were getting on nicely when the shark tore my back, but we managed to get in. They are great chaps. It will be awkward to have only one arm, and maybe I won’t have any, but I am not going to die.”