As a seasoned travel writer whose usual beat involves bustling, exotic metropoles or hitherto unheralded oases for the jaded traveller and whose works have graced seat back pockets for airlines around the globe, I approached my visit to the quaint New England town of Amity Island with something approaching nonchalant ennui, expecting charming locals, the usual tourist traps and an otherwise unremarkable seaside experience. On assignment for the town’s Centenary 4th July Regatta, I anticipated nothing more eventful than overpriced crab cakes, tacky souvenirs and sailboat races. Yet the water around Amity, which means Friendship after all, hides a shadowy undercurrent of animosity beneath its bucolic wave-washed beaches.
At first glance, the town conformed perfectly to the picturesque template. Festive banners fluttered overhead, boats bobbed gently in the harbour adorned with patriotic decorations, and local eateries tempted passers-by with fragrant wafts of chowder and lobster rolls. Quint’s Seafood Shack, prominently situated by the docks, promised the freshest catch. Upon inquiring about Quint himself, the waitress offered a knowing smile and murmured, almost conspiratorially, about his heroic exploits as a shark hunter, a claim that seemed deliberately commercially colourful and curated specifically for tourists craving local folklore.
My next stop took me to the Amity Maritime Museum, which initially struck me as another quaint institution, predictably filled with relics and nautical memorabilia. Yet the battered bones of a boat named Orca occupied pride of place, accompanied by a display recounting a dramatic, almost implausible tale involving the aforementioned Quint, a police chief named Martin Brody, and marine biologist Matt Hooper. They purportedly confronted a great white shark terrorising the town back in 1975. My amusement at this theatrical flourish soon gave way to mildly offended irritation – surely, I reasoned, no serious visitor would buy into such sensationalism, let alone a veteran traveller like myself. It was obviously a gimmick, a macabre motif akin to the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, or Mothman.
Even the pre-regatta gala, intended to celebrate resilience and local spirit, seemed unable to avoid dredging up past horrors. The Mayor, Jeff Hendricks—yes, that Jeff Hendricks, once deputy to Chief Brody and now, improbably but not atypically for an American body politic that lionises geriatric leadership, still clinging to office well into his eighties, addressed attendees with an uncomfortable earnestness about respecting the sea but looking forward, not backwards.
A SMILING SON OF A BITCH
Yet, as I wandered further into town, conversations inadvertently drifted toward hushed anecdotes of past shark attacks. Initial amusement at the colourful yarns gave way to an unsettling suspicion. Local residents spoke hesitently of the horrors of the summer of ’75 – and the events that followed: a second summer some years later involving stranded teenagers, a crashed helicopter and an island-wide power cut all, allegedly, the result of a second rogue shark. Rumours persist to this day, in grand maritime tradition, of a curse upon the Brody family. A sinister, personal grudge between the Great White Shark and this otherwise unassuming family; a local legend lent credence by the suspected shark attack that killed Chief Brody’s youngest son in 1987 in Amity harbour although undermined by the frankly bizarre addendum that said shark followed Chief Brody’s widow to the Bahamas. Despite my efforts to steer conversation back to regatta festivities and away from maritime horror stories, the townspeople appeared determined to revisit their macabre history.
At the regatta itself, despite the cheerful veneer of boat races and bustling seafood stalls, the town’s darker legacy was undeniably evident. Cartoon Shark-shaped balloons hovered ominously overhead, while vendors cheerfully offered t-shirts emblazoned with phrases referencing the infamous shark attacks, including a grainy photograph of a defaced 1975 50th Annual Regatta. Even certain seafood specials seemed tactlessly named – Brody’s Chargrilled Shark Steak sticks in the mind (and a litte in the throat truth be told) – echoing an uncomfortable past that locals seemed oddly comfortable embracing. Clearly there was a local legend too rooted in fact to be dismissed and too intriguing to be ignored. I returned to the Amity Maritime Museum, this time determined to get to the truth.
Though often recounted with the well-worn cadence of folklore, the actual events of that summer in 1975 remain striking in both their detail and their relentless escalation. It began, by most accounts, with a single swimmer’s disappearance—chalked up initially to late-night revelry, strong currents, or perhaps a boating accident. But then came a second victim – poor old Pippet, then the boy Alex Kintner on his lilo and in quick succession the rowboat attack in the estuary, a pattern emerging with grim clarity, even if the shark itself would remain hidden until much, much later. The town’s police chief, Martin Brody – an newcomer from New York with a city cop’s keen sense for trouble and a profound discomfort with water – found himself increasingly at odds with civic leaders more concerned with tourist revenue than public safety.
Reflecting on those events of 1975, it’s easy to understand their enduring grip on local – and even global – imagination. Brody, an outsider whose determination and grit under pressure at first seemed problematic but became emblematic of the community’s resilience; Quint, the curmudgeonly fisherman whose enigmatic bravado and harrowing tales of survival lent authenticity and gravity to what might otherwise have seemed merely sensational; and Hooper, the cerebral scientist whose meticulous approach provided an intellectual counterbalance to his companions’ instincts.
Their improbable partnership, fraught with personal frictions and dramatic tension, seems almost too perfectly structured to be true. The narrative of their voyage aboard the ill-fated Orca – with its climactic struggle between man and beast, its iconic exchanges, and its stark, elemental imagery – possesses a quality that resonates precisely because it feels at once mythically grand and intensely personal. Indeed, it is the blend of human drama, suspense, and vivid storytelling that has ensured these events remain vivid in the town’s collective memory half a century later. Little wonder it’s a tale that put a generation or two off swimming in the sea and contributed to the reputation of sharks as remorseless eating machines.
By my departure from this no longer sunny assignment – one that during the ferry ride to the mainland was dominated by an uneasy vigil of the murky waters – it became clear that the light-hearted travelogue I had anticipated composing in Amity had become irreversibly entangled in an unexpected shark net of tragedy and disaster; my breezy account of an ordinary seaside festival had been transformed by a freak of nature and a few colourful local characters into the island adventure of a lifetime.
It sure would make a hell of a movie.
