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would soon produce the world's first luxury superliner, the
Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse
. According to historian Lee Server, the 655-foot-long, two-thousand-passenger German ship “held a place of pride in the human spirit” rivaled only by the big city skyscrapers as a “remarkable emblem . . . of a remarkable era . . . and of the seemingly limitless progress of science and technology.” Before the
Mauretania
and
Lusitania
,
Normandie
and
Titanic
were built in an effort to duplicate the glory of the
Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse,
Oelrichs hosted elaborate dinner parties in the middle of the Atlantic in the stateroom of the world's greatest ship, regaling his wealthy friends with tales of his long swims and encounters with sharks.
    In an era when the first modern oceanographic research from the 1870 voyage of the HMS
Challenger
was just being published, Oelrichs's captains, who traversed the seven seas in steamships, reported to him that in their combined years of transoceanic travel they had neither seen nor heard reliable evidence of a man-eating shark. And the tycoon confirmed as much to be true from his own extensive observations.
    The millionaire director of
Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen
was indisputably one of the world's great long-distance ocean swimmers. At a time when ichthyologists researched sharks by waiting for dead species to be brought ashore by fishermen, Oelrichs had swum in the presence of countless sharks in deep and shallow waters and never been attacked. Although he never swam the Hellespont like Byron, as he had dreamed, New York newspapermen spread his fame. One wrote, “Some of the trans-Atlantic skippers used to say . . . that upon nearing the American coast they would look for Hermann Oelrichs, and would then know that they could not be very far from land.” Every summer for years he had made legendary five-mile “shark-chasing” swims off the New Jersey coast, from which he returned to shore and
New York Herald
headlines like
“Oelrichs Scares Away the Sharks.”
    A generation before the Roaring Twenties rise of professional sports, Oelrichs was a star of heavily publicized sporting stunts for which the public hungered. He challenged the champion John L. Sullivan to a boxing match, putting up a $10,000 purse of his own money. Sullivan declined. Fighting an adversary who had no choice in the matter, Oelrichs wrestled
a caged lion to a draw, to the thunderous approval of the press
and his fans. Many of the passengers of the
Hildegard
had no doubt seen Oelrichs in the Atlantic off Newport, Rhode Island, demonstrating he was stronger than any fish in the sea. As the press and the cream of New York society, including Whitneys and Vanderbilts, crowded the cliffs over the ocean, Oelrichs challenged a fisherman in a boat to reel him in as a “human fish.” For twenty minutes the fisherman struggled and failed to reel in the stout sportsman on a line fastened to his waist, providing society with what newspapers called “the most interesting incident of the Summer.”
    Now, aboard the
Hildegard
, a hundred miles from shore, several large sharks appeared starboard. Conversation ceased as the big fish moved silently, fins slicing high through the waves. Whispers traversed the deck as Oelrichs quickly changed to his bathing clothes, murmurs growing to shouts as the sports in the crowd urged him on. Oelrichs directed his hands to move the ship closer, and approached the railing. While side wagers were made, men snatched their white boaters against the wind, and women leaned over the railing to watch, long dresses whipping erratically. Others averted their eyes as the water received the powerful athlete.
    Oelrichs disappeared for a moment, then surfaced between heaving four- and five-foot waves. Shaking the water from
his brow, he stroked away from the boat, knifing through the waves atop a thousand feet of ocean. In ways unknown by the boating party, the sharks detected the presence of a large mammal