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John Ford had been married for only two weeks but he was a loving husband who sacrificed his life for his bride when he hurled himself into the jaws of a voracious 18-foot great white shark and died a horrible death. The heroic 31-year-old bridegroom was eaten alive while scuba diving with his wife, Deborah, in the crystal clear waters of Australia's Byron Bay, about 400 miles form Sydney. John worked as a mechanical engineering technician at the city's leading university. All Australia was shocked by the tragedy, wich was the second fatal shark attack in four days in the alluring but dangerous waters along the country's shoreline. In some ways, the news of two shark attacks coming in such quick succession was just more of the same old story. Most Australians live within a few miles of the ocean. And they're determined to swim even though they know the water is teeming with man-eating sharks. A few years before the John Ford tragedy, a shark was believed to have devoured the country's prime minister, who vanished forever after venturing for a solitary swim along the Great Barrier Reef. And by some eerie twist of fate, just 11 years before the fatal attacks in 1993, sharks killed twice within the same week at virtually the same spots -- in Byron Bay and fews miles off the island of Tasmania. After their wedding on May 22, 1993, John and Deborah Ford were enjoying their honeymoon on a dive some 40 feet below the sparkling waters of the South Pacific when their happiness turend to horror. They had spent much of the afternoon of June 9 serenely gliding side-by-side over the reef and kelp bed. they wre beginning to pull themselves up the anchor line of the dive boat when John's eyes widened in alarm. KNIFING THROUGH WATER The biggest shark he had ever seen was knifing through the serene water, making a beeline directly toward his bride, Deborah. It was the size of a Mercedes and as cadaverous gray as a corpse, with dead unblinking eyes that were focused on the unsuspecting woman. The shark didn't hesitate, either. Instantly, the creature homed in on new target -- John Ford. The deadly encounter between shark and man was swift, silent and lethal. The great white closed its jaws on the diver. The sea beast began shaking his body while blood gushed from the doomed driver's ripped torso, stainling the water red. While the shark thrashed its head and shook her husband like a rag doll, the terrified woman kicked desperately to the surface. The moment Deborah broke water she was srceaming of help. The shocked and quaking 29-year-old woman was quickly lifted into a dive boat. Immediately, other divers, fishermen and rescue crews gathered to look for the missing honeymooner and the killer shark. HAD FAINT HOPES Although no one really believed John Ford could have survived the savage attack, they held on the slim hope that, through some miracle, he might still be alive. But those faint hopes were dashed a few hours later when a pair of fishermen who rushed to join the search baited a huge hook with a mackerel and hooked the man-eater. It was an eye-popping behemoth that could have swam right out of the movie Jaws. Fishermen Ron Boggis and Terry Bertoli fought it for 90 minutes until the tortured beast, still thrashing in the water, spewed up chunks of wet suit and a face mask. At last it disgorged the raggedly-torn torse of the ill-fated honeymooner. Then the powerful animal bit through thick line and swam away, leaving a ghastly chum of flesh and blood behind. Later, the victim's tearful widow hailed her selfsacrificing spouse as a hero and said, "He was a god husband and I loved him dearly." She said of the shark after her bridegroom pushed her away, "It took his life instead of mine." The earlier attack was as god-awful as Ford's grisly death. Thirty-four-years-old Theresa "Terry" Cartwright,a nurse-midwife, died in the jwas of another great white in front of her horrified husband and five children. Four of the children who watched while their mother was snatched and carried away to a ghastly death by 12-foot shark were six-year-old quadruplets. FAMILY LOVED ADVENTURE The Cartwrights were an adventutous couple who had left their native England and moved to Tonga in the South Seas, then to the island of Tasmania off the southeastern tip of Australia. Like his father in Kent, England, Ian Cartwright was a man of the sea. He was director of the Australian Maritime College in Beauty Point. That Saturday, he and several colleagues and their families set out to spend an active day doing what they liked to do best -- frolicking over and under the warm, sky-blue waters. It was indeed a beautiful day to be alive. Terry hadn't been diving since the birth of her youngest child, 16-moth-old Paul. An enthusiastic diver, she made sure she was with the first trio to go over the side of the former shrimp trawler which carried the fun-loving families. They seemed to be in a great location for a dive. Beneath the surface, the divers were soon surrounded by multicolored fish and other equally exotic aquatic fauna. They were just off Tenth Island, four miles from the Tasmanian coast, right in the middle of a big fur seal colony. The Cartwrights and other experienced divers on the outing knew that seals provide some of the favorite dinner fare of great whites and other large sharks. But no one had seen so much as a single fin in the area, and it seemed to be safe. It wasn't. Terry Cartwright hadn't been in the sparkling blue water for 10 minutes before her appalled family and friends saw a huge shark rushing toward her like a runaway demon from hell. A TORTURED SILHOUETTE Peering down from the trawler, the helpless divers could see the terribly tortured silhouette of the woman as the shark butted, tossed and shook her in its powerful jaws while tearing off huge chunks of flesh. A yellow dive fin, still attached to a foot, protruded from its devastating jaws. Then, with a flick of its giant tail -- and with the woman still clamped firmly in its massive jaws -- the maneater turned and vanished in a billowing cloud of scarlet. Later that afternoon, a government launch recovered a severed human leg with a yellow diving fin still strapped to the foot. No other trace of the hapless diver was ever found. - the end - |