Presidents vs. Sharks

You’re gonna need a bigger vote.

Inspired by the 50th anniversary of the film Jaws, we’re digging into some of the most notable encounters between American presidents and sharks.

We start with founding encounters like George Washington’s diary entry about a shark sighting on his trip to Barbados and John Adams’s weird shark feeding experiment aboard The Sensible, and then we look at Theodore Roosevelt and JFK’s involuntary swims with sharks. Then, we focus on the greatest presidential shark story—one that inspired the events of the book and movie Jaws: In July 1916, after a series of horrific deaths off the coast of New Jersey, President Woodrow Wilson declared a war on sharks.

Listen to the episode here:

Apologies to the French ambassador to the United States Francois, Marquis de Barbé-Marbois for mispronouncing and sometimes even forgetting his name.

Sources:
Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916 by Michael Capuzzo
Presidents have long fanned fears about sharks to display toughness by Christopher Pepin-Neff, The Washington Post, July 31, 2022
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
Twelve Years With Roosevelt by Vice-Admiral Ross T. McIntire
PT 109: John F. Kennedy in World War II by Robert J. Donovan
Our Revolutionary Forefathers: The letters of François, Marquis de Barbé-Marbois, during his residence in the United States as secretary of the French legation, 1779-1785 by François Marquis de Barbé-Marbois
“1779 July 17th. Saturday.,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/01-02-02-0009-0006-0004. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 2, 1771–1781, ed. L. H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961, p. 399.]
How the summer of sharks reshaped our understanding of US presidential elections by Andrew Thaler, Southern Fried Science
Security Outlays by U.S. by Philip Shabecoff, The New York Times, September 16, 1973