The Friend Of My Enemy Is Dead

YOU HEARD ME. First Peter Benchley, now THIS GUY. DEAD, DEAD, DEAD. And it COULDN'T HAPPEN TO A NICER GUY.

Frank Mundus, pictured above with one of our North Atlantic operatives, was probably the model for Captain Quint in Peter Benchley's epic of Shark slaughter, Jaws. Benchley always denied it, but let us pause a moment and CONNECT THE DOTS:

 

>> Mundus made a career of Shark hunting, chartering out his Montauk-based fishing boat, the Cricket II, to bored or under-funded "sportsmen" (paugh!) looking for a big kill on a budget. He called Sharks "the poor man's big game."

>> Benchley went out on the Cricket II many times over a period of weeks, learning about Quint's Mundus's line of work, including all the ins and outs of "sharkin." This included all the fine points you remember from the book: the chumming, the barrels attached to harpoons, the home office full of boiled Shark remnants. Then Benchley went home and wrote Jaws.

 

>> Nahh. Benchley probably based the book on SOMEONE ELSE.

 

A Middle Western operative found an obituary about Mundus in, of all places, the Sept. 27th, 2008 Economist. It takes up all of page 102. Says here old Frank felt sorry for every fish he ever caught. Okay. It also says he died in his bed at age 82. Whatever. AS LONG AS HE'S GONE.

Some of you newer operatives will ask why, after I heaped praise on the heads of the crew of the Andrea Gail, I would then turn around and cast aspersions on Frank Mundus. IT'S HARD TO EXPLAIN. Sport fishing, as they call it, makes me grit my pharyngeal TEETH, and sport fishing for Sharks makes me want to empty my stomach on everyone who supports this sort of activity. The guys on the Andrea Gail brought Swordfish together with those who LOVED AND APPRECIATED them. Frank Mundus did something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. He took the reputation of Sharks and changed it. He taught his customers to stop treating Sharks as valuable tidiers of the ocean, uncomplaining cleaners-up of ANYTHING that needed eating, and made them look like SOMETHING ELSE. He made them look like TERRIFYING WILD BEASTS THAT WANTED TO EAT YOU. 

Why did he do this? So he could TURN A BUCK.

Sic transit gloria Mundus, I guess.