Shark Page 6

  Squatinus is a fisshe in the se, of fiue cubites longe: his tayle is a fote brode, & he hideth him in the slimy muddle of the se, & marreth al other fisshes that come nigh him: it hath so sharpe a skinne that in som places they shaue wode with it, and bone also/on his skinne is blacke short here [hair]. The nature hathe made him so harde that he can nat be persed with nouther yron nor stole.6

  This illustration of an angel shark first appeared in Konrad Gesner’s Historia Animalium Liber IV, published in 1558. (From Curious Woodcuts of Fanciful and Real Beasts: A selection of 190 sixteenth-century woodcuts from Gesner’s and Topsell’s natural histories, Dover Publications, 1971)

  Andrewe also described the ability of numerous shark and ray species to evert their stomachs in order to eject unwanted matter: ‘Scolopendra is a fisshe/whan he hathe swalowed in an angle [hook], then he spueth out al his guttes till he be quyt of the hoke/and than he gadereth in all his guttes agayne’.7 (The scolopendra was a sea-monster in ancient Greek myth; the genus of the same name is a venomous sea centipede.)

  The blurring of legend and fact is curiously persistent in the European shark story. In 1555, Olaus Magnus published his Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus. It became the sixteenth-century equivalent of a bestseller, was translated into numerous languages and reprinted regularly over the next hundred years. It is still a reference work of sorts. Magnus combined Swedish history and folklore, but he was blown off course in his deadly serious descriptions of Nordic sea life, describing what he claimed to be

  . . . the cruelty of some Fish, and the kindness of others. There is a fish of the kind of Sea-Dogfish, called Boloma, in Italian, and in Norway, Haafisck, that will set upon a man swimming in the Salt-Waters, so greedily, in Troops, unawares, that he will sink a man to the bottome, not only by his biting, but also by his weight; and he will eat his more tender parts, as his nostrils, fingers, &c., until such time as the Ray come to revenge these injuries; which runs thorow the Waters armed with her natural fins, and with some violence drives away these fish that set upon the drown’d man, and doth what he can to urge him to swim out. And he also keeps the man, until such time as his spirit being quite gone; and after some days, as the Sea naturally purgeth itself, he is cast up. This miserable spectacle is seen on the Coasts of Norway when men go to wash themselves, namely, strangers and Marriners that are ignorant of the dangers, leap out of their ships into the sea. For these Dogfish, or Boloma, lie hid under the ships riding at Anchor as Water Rams, that they may catch men, their malicious natures stirring them to it.8

  German narturalist Konrad Gesner was a contemporary of Olaus Magnus. This woodcut of an eagle ray, with its characteristic angular disc and long whiplike tail with stinging spine, appeared in Gesner’s Historia Animalium Liber IV, published in 1558. (From Curious woodcuts of fanciful and real beasts: a selection of 190 sixteenth-century woodcuts from Gesner’s and Topsell’s natural histories, Dover Publications, 1971)

  Others followed Archestratus in his pragmatic appreciation of the gastronomic possibilities of sharks and rays. In his 1604 Ouverture de Cuisine, Lancelot de Casteau, who described himself as a merchant, and Master Cook to three princes of Liège, includes this recipe for a dogfish pie:

  Take a piece of dogfish, four fingers in size, & put it to boil for an hour, & remove the skin close, then put it full of cloves of gillyflowers [a fragrant flower] & put it into the pie [with] some salt and mint, & chopped marjoram: when the pie is well cooked take some toasted bread, & make a pepper thereon, & put therein nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves of gillyflowers, that the sauce will be very thick, & cast on the pie when it is cooked.9

  It’s no coincidence that the words ‘geography’ and ‘shark’ were first recorded in English at about the same time, in 1542 and 1569 respectively. They were created out of necessity, to explain new phenomena that were part of the great European rebirth, the Renaissance, which encouraged the broadening of both mind and horizon. The development of printing made possible the wide dissemination of long-forgotten texts of classical antiquity, hitherto guarded jealously in monasteries or banned by successions of Popes. The Renaissance-driven scientific revolution is popularly dated to the 1543 publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Quite apart from the economic benefits of scientific and geographical discoveries, there arose ‘a new intellectual approach to the world of nature’10 among laymen as well as scientists, including those who sailed to the exotic new worlds. ‘What was offered did not have to be part of a grand scheme of meaning. It was enough that it be “interesting”, unusual or novel.’11

  Thus it was that a large sea creature, displayed in London in 1569, caused great excitement, not least through being linked with the slave trader and freebooter Captain (later Sir) John Hawkins, who by this date had made three trips to the Caribbean region, exchanging his ‘black ivory’, slaves, for much wealth. Hawkins was never averse to plundering another captain’s ship, and as long as his exploits brought financial rewards to Queen Elizabeth, she turned a diplomatic blind eye to his less lawful pursuits.

  Hawkins’ mysterious creature had no name in English. Until then, the small shark species found in inshore British waters were known as either nursefish or dogfish—both words first recorded in English at the end of the fifteenth century. (Sharks are also likened to dogs in the Italian pescecane and the earlier Latin canes in mare—both of which can be translated as ‘sea dogs’. In English, ‘sea dog’ was the name for seals, sharks and also mariners.) It may seem surprising that northern Europeans did not apparently know about the large sharks that lived in their own waters or—in considerable numbers—in the Mediterranean. One possible reason is that there had been very little deep-sea fishing: in Britain, the home of the English language, freshwater fishes and eels had been the aquatic food of choice until about the eleventh century, when they gradually became associated with the upper classes. Only then were peasants obliged to turn to inshore and then offshore marine fishing to supplement their diets.

  A London printer’s broadside advertising the mysterious sea creature stated, ‘Ther is no proper name for it that I knowe, but that sertayne men of Captayne Haukinses doth call it a “sharke”’.12

  It is at this point that the waters become muddy. Where did Captain Hawkins’s men get the word ‘shark’, and how had this particular specimen arrived in London? Several European language origins have been suggested for the word: the Anglo-Saxon sceran translates as ‘cut’ or ‘shear’; the German Schurke translates as ‘villain’ or ‘scoundrel’; and in Austrian German, a sturgeon is Schirk. Plausible though each of these may seem, all are rejected in preference to an old Mayan word xoc which, despite its spelling, is pronounced like ‘shark’ and has been linked to the presence of bull sharks in the freshwater systems of the Yucatan Peninsula.

  Most sources, including the 4116-page Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the respected Florida Museum of Natural History, and the Online Etymology Dictionary, agree that the word was brought back from the Caribbean by Captain Hawkins.13 But what about the fish? According to the OED, ‘the word seems to have been introduced by the sailors of Captain (afterwards Sir John) Hawkins’s expedition, who brought home a specimen which was exhibited in London in 1569’.14 The other sources named here also state that Hawkins arrived in London with the specimen.

  This implication, that the Hawkins expedition might actually have returned to London with a shark, is incorrect. The creature was a thresher shark (Aliopas spp.), the incredible tail of which is as long as the entire body. It had been inadvertently netted by English fishermen in the Strait of Dover and once in London, ‘its skin was stuffed and mounted at one of the Fleet Street taverns, the Red Lion. Within a week the broadside announcing the capture and display of the fish circulated widely through the city’.15 The lengthy description accompanying the broadside’s woodcut illustration is testament to the wonder it caused (and the fluid nature of sixteenth-century written English):

  Thi
s woodcut by a London artist is of the thresher shark that was displayed in the city in 1569, attracting the first known written use of the word ‘shark’ in the English language. ()

  The true discripcion of this marueilous straunge Fishe, whiche was taken on thursday was sennight, the .xvi. day of June, this present month, in the yeare of our Lord God. M. DLX. ix. A declaration of the taking of this straunge Fishe, with the length & bredth. &c. DOing you to vnderstande, that on thursdaye the .xvi. daye of this present month of June, in ye yeare of our Lord God. MD. LV. ix. This straunge fishe (whych you see here picttured) was taken betweene Callis, and Douer, by sertayne English Fissher men, whych were a fyshynge for mackrell. And this straunge & merueylous Fyshe, folowynge after the scooles of Mackrell, came rushinge in to the fisher mens Netts, and brake and tore their nettes marueilouslie, in such sorte, that at the fyrst they weare muche amased ther at: and marueiled what it should bee, that kept suche a sturr with their Netts, for they were verie much harmed by it, with breking and spoyling their Netts. And then they seing, and perceiuyng that the Netts wold not serue by reason of the greatnes of this straung Fishe, then they with such instruements, ingins, & thinges that they had: made such shift that they tooke this straung Fishe. And vppon fridaye the morowe after brought it vpp to Billynges gate in London, whyche was the .xvii. daye of June, and ther it was seene and vewid of manie which marueiled much at the straungnes of it. For here hath neuer the lyke of it ben seene: and on saterdaye, being the .xviii. daye, sertayne fishe mongers in new Fishstreat, agreeid with them that caught it, for, and in consideracion of the harme, whych they receiued by spoylinge of ther Netts, and for their paines, to haue this straunge fishe. And hauinge it, did open it and flaied of the skinn, and saued it hole. And adiudging the meat of it to be good, broyled a peece and tasted of hit, and it looked whit like Veale when it was broiled, and was good & sauerie, (though sumwhat straung) in the eating, and then they sold of it that same saterdaye, to suche as would buy of the same, and they them selues did bake of it, and eate it for daintie: and for the more serteintaintie and opening of the truth, the good men of the Castle and the Kinges head in new Fish streat, did but a great deale & bakte of it, and this is moste true.

  THis straunge Fishe is in length .xvii. foote, and .iii. foote broad, and in compas about the bodie .vi. foote. and proporcioned as you see here by this picture, and is round snowted, short headdid as you see, hauing .iii. ranckes of teeth on eyther iawe, maruaylous sharpe and very short .ii. eyes growing neare his snout, & as big as a horses eyes, and his hart as big as an Oxes hart, & like wyse his liuer and lightes bige as an Oxes, but all the garbidge yt was in hys bellie besides, would haue gone in to a felt hat. Also .ix. finns, & .ii. of the sormost bee .iii. quarters of a yeard longe from the body: & a verie big one on the fore parte of his backe, as you see h[ . . .] by this picture, blackish on the backe & a litle whitishe on the belly, a slender tayle, and had but one bone & that was a great rydge bone runninge a longe his backe, from the head vnto the tayle, and had great force in his tayle when he was in the water. Also it hath .v. gills of eache side of the head, shoing white as you see. Ther is no proper name for it that I knowe but that sertayne men of Captayne Haukinses, doth call it a Sharke. And it is to bee seene in London, at the red Lyon, in Flete streete. Fininis.

  Imprynted at London. in Fleatestreate, beneathe the conduit, at the sign of Saint John Euangelist, by Thomas Colwell16

  The name ‘shark’ doesn’t seem to have caught on quickly: for about another hundred years the English would also refer to sharks as tiburones, the Spanish word for ‘large sharks’, a word which Spanish sailors had themselves brought back from their Caribbean voyages. But negative connotations were associated with the new English word soon enough, as this 1628 definition of a social outcast shows:

  A sharke. Is one whom all other meanes have failed, and hee now lives of himself. He is some needy cashir’d fellow, whom the World has flung off, yet still claspes againe, and is like one a drowning, fastens upon any thing that’s next at hand. Amongst other of his Shipwrackes hee has happily lost shame, and this want supplies him. No man puts his Braine to more use than he, for his life is a daily invention, and each meale a new Strategem.17

  European ocean exploration generated an exponential increase in knowledge. The realisation that there were new worlds, and seas surrounding them, meant a reassessment of many prevailing certainties, in particular that human beings occupied the centre of the universe. Nature in all its forms—water, soil, rocks, fossils, plants and living creatures—came under renewed investigation. One of the scientists whose discoveries resulted in ‘the essential change to the modern from the medieval world’18 was Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), the inventor of modern taxonomy, the classification of organisms—although it would be a long way into the future before the greatly varied elasmobranchs were arranged into their present-day orders, families and species. Back then, sharks were, literally, out of sight out of mind. But they did play a curious role in another unrelated and critically important scientific breakthrough during that dynamic period. It is in the story of glossopetrae, a story which also neatly symbolises the great gulf between medieval and modern.

  Glossopetrae is a Latin compound word usually translated as ‘tongue stones’. They were hard, pointed, pebble-like objects, commonly found on or in the ground, but they were not, however, stones. Known since antiquity, their origin had never been established. Pliny the Elder thought that they fell to earth on particularly dark nights; others believed them to be shards of lightning bolts; yet another theory was that they were nature’s response to a miracle worked by St Paul when he was shipwrecked on the island of Malta:

  And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm. Howbeit they looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god.19

  St Paul’s miraculous escape spurred him to render Malta’s snakes harmless—the biblical explanation for why the island has no indigenous venomous snake species. Nature’s supposed response to the saint’s act was the spontaneous production of untold numbers of desiccated serpents’ tongues, strewn thickly over the island’s low hills and fields. Whatever their origin, glossopetrae were always thought to have potent magical and healing powers, and were frequently worn as personal talismans. Who would be the first to discover that these Europeans, like so many ‘primitive’ peoples of the largely uncharted southern hemisphere, were adorning themselves with fossilised shark teeth?

  In October 1666 a young Danish scientist, Nicolaus Steno (also known as Stenson), was in the employ of the Grand Duke of Florence. When a great white shark was caught off the coast, the Grand Duke called for its head to be brought to the city for examination. The chance arrival in Florence of a huge shark’s head, ‘and its dissection by a young scientist eager to prove himself before a prestigious Italian court mark the unlikely beginning to an intellectual revolution that, in its way, was as profound as that of Galileo and Copernicus’.20

  In 1667 Nicolaus Steno published Canis carchariae dissectum caput (‘A shark-head dissected’) advancing his theories on fossils. He used this illustration, from an unpublished catalogue of the Vatican’s natural history collections, to help prove that glossopetrae were in fact fossilised sharks’ teeth. Note the inner rows of teeth waiting to become functional. (From The Seashell on the Mountaintop, Alan Cutler, Heinemann, 2003)

  Steno, who happened to have had access to a collection of glossopetrae in Copenhagen, and had studied them in detail, was struck by the similarity between the stones and the teeth of the
great white shark. While not the first to make this observation, Steno was so certain that glossopetrae and shark teeth were one and the same that he became determined to discover how it could be that shark teeth could be found far from the sea. This highly praised anatomist, who had already made numerous discoveries about mammalian physiology, put down his scalpel and began to travel. As he came across more and more inland marine fossil sites his quest became more complex and abstract. As well as the shark teeth, how had seashell-like objects become embedded in mountain rocks far from the sea? How could a solid come to be enclosed in another solid? Were rocks once soft? Were they originally water-carried sediments which gradually hardened around forms trapped in them?

  In 1669 and 1671 Steno published two short works in which he set out the fundamentals of geology, including stratification (formation of rock or sediment layers), deep time (the Earth is far, far older than the 6000 years stated by the Bible) and superposition (the oldest rock layer is at the bottom).21 Steno went so far as to propose that an island such as Malta may once have lain beneath an ancient sea; an audacious suggestion at the time that would be proved correct by later generations of geologists and is, of course, how Malta came to have its innumerable ‘glossopetrae’. (To the dismay of his scientific colleagues, Steno subsequently converted to Catholicism. Now, three hundred years after his death, the first proponent of deep time is in the process of being beatified as a prelude to canonisation.)

  As Steno was patiently tramping the hills of Tuscany, on his way to becoming the first true historian of the planet Earth, a young Englishman with no less a thirst for knowledge set out to travel the world, although he had more in common with swashbuckling John Hawkins than studious Nicolaus Steno. William Dampier, buccaneer and navigator, would be the first man to circumnavigate the globe three times. His diaries recorded his adventures and were subsequently published as books, one of which, A Voyage to New Holland, published in 1703, became the most influential travel book since the publication in 1300 of Marco Polo’s Travels.