Below the Surface: Dunedin shark attack claimed life of William Black in 1967

Friday, 28 December 2018

As darkness fell motorists were urged to put their car lights on full to illuminate the dark sea below.

A firefighting spotlight, and a large searchlight from a nearby modelling club lit up the waves, as people with torches combed the beaches.

Hours earlier, William Black, a 21-year-old lifesaver, was leading in a belt race when a big wave broke in front of him.

A shark was spotted just metres behind Black by the person in second place.

**READ MORE: 

* Below the Surface Chapter 1: Dunedin shark attacks killed three in 1960s

* Below the Surface Chapter 3: Dunedin shark attacks men spearfishing

* Below the Surface Chapter 4: Dunedin shark's 'Huge bloody eyes'**

'Everything was blood after that,' said Kevin Brown, a fellow St Kilda Surf Lifesaving Club member.

Those on the shore started to reel the lines in, but Black's line suddenly went slack and had been severed.

His body was never found.

'IT WENT STRAIGHT FOR BILL'

Kevin Brown still enjoys diving for paua, but does not enjoy the sensation of not knowing what is beneath him.

And he has good reason.

The former surf lifesaver was racing against the powerfully built Black for the St Kilda Surf Club's senior belt racing championship on the night of March 9, 1967.

The smaller and faster Brown was confident he would win, yet the huge swells worked in Black's favour.

Both men were wearing a canvas belt connected to a line, and once the swimmer reached that target they would raise their hand and be reeled the 14 metres back to shore.

Russell Lawson, the surf club's chief instructor, later told police: 'the race was uneventful until the swimmers were about halfway to the buoy, when a mist fell, making visibility poor'.

Brown was one wave behind Black, who was just 10 metres from the buoy when everything suddenly changed.

'POOL OF BLOOD'

'I remember stopping to see where Bill was and I came up on top of this swell and I looked directly into the swell in front of me and there is this shark … there is this big shark.

'I knew it was a shark, but I wanted to believe it was a porpoise.

'One flick of its tail and it went straight for Bill.'

Brown, speaking from his home in Central Otago, told Stuff he reached the top of the next swell and looked down 'into a pool of blood'.

'I was terrified, absolutely terrified.'

Brown raised his hands to be be pulled in, and recalled his fears that the unseen shark, which he later estimated to be about three-and-a-half metres, would take his legs from under him.

'I remember kicking at the start, and then thinking 'no, don't kick''.

Instead, he raised his legs out of the water, and 'I just laid there dormant'.

'I didn't want to draw attention to myself.'

It took about two minutes to reel him back to shore. Back to safety.

'I thought I was dead. That is something you never want to go through again … that was more terrifying than seeing the shark.'

THE SEARCH

When he got to shore, the shocked Brown told his fellow lifeguards that 'a shark has got Bill'.

Initially they didn't believe him as they were still paying out the line.

Lawson told authorities that 'on commencing pulling in, I found that there was no weight on the line.

'I felt no pull or jerk at any stage.'

A surf canoe was sent out to find Black, or the shark, reaching the area within three minutes of when he was last seen.

'I am quite convinced that William Richard Black lost his life as a result of being attacked by this shark,' Brown told police after the incident.

'At the time there was nothing I could do to help him.'

DISAPPEARANCE HIGHLY UNUSUAL

It was highly unusual for Black's body never to be recovered.

That's the opinion of Dr Gavin Naylor, shark research curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Humans bitten by a shark tended to be bitten once, and then left alone.

'Of the all the information we have, it is very rare that the body is not recovered.'

A police report from the incident said for weeks patrols of beaches were made during the days and nights after Black's disappearance 'no part of the body of the missing person was ever found'.

Two days after Black disappeared an object was spotted wedged between the rocks.

'I pulled it out, and found it to be a surf lifesaving belt', the man told police.

'WE DIDN'T GET ANY OF BILL BACK'

'Should have been me,' cried survivor was the headline in The Evening Post, detailing Brown's shock at the attack.

The report noted the attack was less than a mile from the attack which claimed Les Jordan three years earlier.

Months after his disappearance, Black's case was sent to the Attorney-General as the local Dunedin coroner sought an inquest, despite no body being found.

That coroner, John Murray, found that 'Black died at St Kilda Beach, Dunedin, on the 9th day of March, 1967, when he was attacked by a shark while competing in lifesaving events at that beach'.

After the attack Brown remembered heading home 'and bawling my eyes out for an hour before returning to the surf club' where he could be surrounded by mates.

Also at the beach were some of Black's family, who had heard about the attack on the evening news.

Brown's take on the incident was that the shark had bitten Bill, also separating him from the line.

The belt, which was tied tightly around his waist, has come off as the 'shark or sharks feasted on BiIl'.

'We didn't get any of Bill back.'

He described Black as a 'top guy'.

'He was a big guy, quiet and amiable'.

The attack never quite left him, and he was reminded of it when at the beach, watching the news, or talking with friends.

'It is in the back of your mind all the time.

'I still do a bit of hunting and diving, and am still afraid of what I can't see.'

He considered himself fortunate the shark did not attack him, as that race was the first time Bill had ever beaten him.

'I was very lucky and he was very unlucky.'

FORTY YEARS TO GET OVER BROTHER'S DEATH

Black's only sibling, Margaret Card, also lives in Central Otago.

Her home in Roxburgh was about as far from the sea as you can be in New Zealand, but that was purely coincidental.

The recently married Card was living in England when she received a telegram concerning Bill Black - the name of both her father and brother.

'My father wasn't well so you know what I thought didn't you …'

Finding out her brother was killed by a shark was 'terrible'.

'It is hard to describe really. To be honest the sharks live in the sea, it is their territory isn't it.'

No trace of her brother's body was ever found, and that was a double blow for her family, particularly her father.

'It broke my father's heart, he didn't live long after that.'

She returned to New Zealand a year later and recalled her stepmother taking a newspaper clipping of the tragedy and saying 'let's burn those while your father is out'.

Her brother had turned 21 in the months before the attack, was the captain of the St Kilda Surf Club, and was studying at Massey University.

'He was a happy fellow, he had his future ahead of him.'

Every time she heard of a shark attack, the memory of her brother and how his death impacted her family came flooding back.

'It absolutely shocks.'

Last year she received 'out of the blue' a letter and photo of Bill from a former girlfriend of his.

Card returned to Dunedin when a plaque funded by shark attack survivor Barry Watkins was unveiled at St Clair in 2011, and helped provide closure for her family.

'The fact his body was never found … it took me actually those 40 years to get over it.'

Below the Surface is a Stuff series about five shark attacks that occurred in the 1960s and early '70s off the coast of Dunedin. Three men were killed and two more seriously injured, devastating families, traumatising survivors, and sparking hysteria about the predator that lurked beneath. Read the next chapter in the five-part series here.