In the late evening they spotted several sharks and, after donning his swimsuit, Oelrichs jumped in to confront them.
He performed a similar stunt in July of 1891 when he was sailing with several other business moguls aboard his yacht, the Hildegard. It sent many of his guests into a panic, some covering their eyes while others called for help, however the great fish quickly swam away and Oelrichs pridefully collected on the bet. At a party at his seaside home he once jumped into the water with a shark to settle a $250 bet. Oelrichs did not just look for evidence to prove his theory, he actively tested it himself. Many people wrote to Oelrichs from across the globe about times they had witnessed attacks, but none had any credible evidence and nearly all, save a couple, happened outside of temperate waters. This set off a discussion about sharks across the nation as newspapers began widely reporting on the reward. Temperate waters being defined as those north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. In 1891 he decided to offer $500 for any proof of a shark attacking a living man, woman or child in temperate waters.
Another stunt he liked to pull towards the beginning of every summer was to swim five miles off the New Jersey coast and back, newspapers such as the New York Herald would run headlines such as, Oelrichs Scares Away the Sharks. He had also conversed with many captains of his ships and none of them could ever think of a time when a person was actively attacked by a shark. These experiences led him to believe they were harmless scavengers that should not be feared, even going so far as to call them cowards. With all this open ocean swimming it comes as no surprise that he had experience with sharks. When the captain and crew attempted to haul him on board he would start swimming just fine and act like he was offended that they thought he could not make it back under his own power. When a ship was expected to reach port soon Oelrichs would swim to it a few miles out and act as if he was a distressed swimmer. He also liked to play tricks on the captains of his ships. Oelrichs particularly enjoyed endurance swimming and was regarded as one of the best in the entire world, swimming so much in fact that New York fishermen often looked for him when they were coming into shore. Hermann Oelrichs was a well known American millionaire shipping mogul who was seen as one of the greatest sportsmen in the country. As such many also began to discount the belief in man-eating sharks. Many became skeptical and no longer accepted the tales of dangerous sea creatures such as colossal squids that attacked ships or mermaids that lured young sailors to their death.
When the science driven Victorian Era came along it put many tales about the sea to rest. Sharks remained terrifying beasts in fiction but their image in the real world began to slowly change over time. Since ancient times the shark has been seen as a devil fish, a creature that swallows unsuspecting swimmers and attacks boats without provocation.
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