Celebrating what lurks below the surface

For every sailor who has seen a shark fin, the 1975 American thriller film Jaws provided the iconic quote, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” The 50th anniversary of the movie in 2025 brings back an article written by noted sailing author Roger Vaughan from 1976:

In the recently popular film about the large, motorized trash container that eats people (Jaws), one of the main characters is a professional shark fisherman by the name of Quint. Quint is a very macho, irrational fellow, a grossly drawn, hardly believable character even when he explains his mania for killing sharks stems from a WW II torpedoing he suffered, after which he and a thousand shipmates swam around in groups waiting to see which group the sharks would attack next. Only 300 men survived.

After harpooning the marauding white shark Quint takes a baseball bat to his radio and purposefully redlines his tired engine until it blows. The trash container then leaps into the boat and eats him up, satisfying Quint’s sustained death wish and sparing the audience further footage of him. – Full reports