Lengthy Island’s ‘monster’ shark hunter legend might have impressed ‘Jaws,’ iconic Capt. Quint

Typically they get it proper, typically they wouldn’t get it proper.

The Steven Spielberg basic “Jaws” takes place in a fictional small city in New England — however Lengthy Islanders declare the blockbuster film and novel that impressed it owes a hat tip to a late native legend.

“Monster” hunter fisherman Frank Mundus — a proud son of Montauk — was the inspiration for Robert Shaw’s salty Capt. Quint within the film, which turns 50 on Friday, household and pals mentioned.

“Anyone who is aware of something about fishing is aware of that it’s based mostly on him,” the shark hunter’s daughter Pat Mundus advised The Put up.

“Everyone on the East Finish is aware of,” she added of the mighty man who died in 2008 at 82.

Mundus, who lives in Greenport, mentioned folks nonetheless ask her every day if she’s associated to Frank.

The Brooklyn-born seaman got here to the Montauk Level from the north jersey shore within the early Nineteen Fifties to do what wasn’t historically finished earlier than: deliberately exit seeking the dreaded apex predators of the ocean.

The self-branded “monster fisherman” turned the tide of “the family-friendly inshore fishing picture that Montauk had,” mentioned Pat, a former oil tanker employee who’s now 68.

Mundus couldn’t give two flying fins, nevertheless.

“He branded himself a ‘monster fisher’ as a result of he knew that it could appeal to extra constitution clients,” she defined, including that there was a way to the insanity.

As a boy within the metropolis, Mundus tried leaping from roof to roof between a pair of three-story buildings and fell to the bottom, breaking his arm and growing a near-fatal an infection. The miracle restoration — one which hindered his education to the purpose he completed eighth grade at practically 18 — is what gave Mundus his “large booming power.”

“He painted one toenail purple and the opposite blue and referred to as them port and starboard. He wore an earring. He went barefoot all over the place. He performed pranks and made a public spectacle of himself.”

Maybe Mundus’ most iconic gag was when “he had one other man gown up as a Frankenstein-like monster they usually put him in a water-resistant casket and marked it offshore.”

“They ‘found’ the man, they introduced the casket again and opened it up on the dock, and this large monster sprang out.”

By the Sixties, the attention-grabbing antics had been sufficient to reel in “Jaws” author-to-be Peter Benchley.

The penman fatefully rode on Mundus’ boat, the Cricket, which was named for the working joke that its captain regarded like Jiminy.

“My father was a really clever particular person, however not terribly well-educated, so he didn’t know who Peter Benchley was,” Mundus, one in every of Frank’s three daughters, mentioned.

“He simply thought it was a man who was all for listening to tales about catching fish.”

The depiction of Quint and the dearth of recognition of the actual story despatched Mundus overboard, his daughter mentioned.

“He had very rigorously crafted his entire picture in his personal model for 30 years,” she added. “After which some man simply got here alongside and stole it with out acknowledging who he was.”

Even Suffolk County Government Ed Romaine laments to at the present time that Mundus and the setting of Montauk had been shortchanged.

“Frank Mundus was a legendary fisherman who could possibly be in Hemingway’s ‘Previous Man and the Sea,’” he advised The Put up.

What ‘Jaws’ obtained flawed

Mundus mentioned her father isn’t the bitter previous salt that his Hollywood counterpart.

“He was by no means within the Navy, he had no revenge in opposition to evil — he didn’t search restitution for the lack of his shipmates, who had been all eaten by sharks, none of that,” she mentioned.

“He had a aptitude for being outrageous, however he wasn’t indignant and pissed off, and would by no means take a baseball bat to a VHF radio.”

After they noticed the movie in theaters collectively, Mundus wasn’t afraid to talk his thoughts.

“A few occasions he stood up and mentioned, ‘that’s unimaginable, that wouldn’t ever work!’” she recalled.

“He laughed via all of the elements that everyone else was completely scared about.”

Though Pat mentioned that her dad moved on from his gripes, Roy Scheider apparently didn’t get the message and apprehensive Mundus would do one thing like give him a black eye — like a doll’s eye.

The person who performed Chief Brody advised publicist Todd Shapiro he was terrified of doing movie anniversary occasions on the East Finish in case he would run into Mundus, in accordance with the PR guide who tried recruiting Scheider for a reunion.

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The actual sequel

No matter whether or not it was reality or fiction, the celebrity of “Jaws” reshaped Montauk within the Eighties and remodeled the then-quaint fishing village into Sharktown USA.

Sam Hershowitz started internet hosting annual shark tournaments at his marina on Star Island, “that introduced folks all the way in which up from the Carolinas,” he mentioned.

“The primary yr we had 82 boats, the yr after we had 150,” Hershowitz, 85, advised The Put up, including that he would play John Williams’ iconic “Jaws” rating earlier than all of them left for sea.

“The motel homeowners used to thank me as a result of they might be booked stable.”

Through the 1986 competitors, Mundus and his former colleague Donnie Braddick made extra fishing historical past.

They introduced in what some file books name the biggest ever rod-and-reel caught nice white at a whopping 17 ft and three,427 kilos.

Sam’s Star Island Yacht Membership and Marina has a duplicate of the massive man that is still a vacationer selfie favourite to at the present time, Hershowitz mentioned, including that as a consequence of shark fishing laws, it’s a file that may by no means be damaged.

Braddick, now 69, was captaining a tuna fishing boat when he noticed tons of sharks devouring a useless whale about 25 miles southeast of Montauk Level.

The boaters he was with had been too frightened, so Braddick needed to wait till he introduced them again to make a go on the sharks.

En route again to land, Braddick noticed Mundus coming in from an in a single day constitution.

“In case you wanted coronary heart surgical procedure and the very best coronary heart surgeon was passing by, it could be a good suggestion to seize him,” Braddick, who left Montauk for North Carolina when it turned “bank cards and spending mommy and daddy’s cash,” advised The Put up.

The duo returned to port and stocked up on necessities — beer and pizza — and headed again out of their respective boats into the moonlit hours.

“In the course of the evening, we felt the boat get bumped…after which it was like, ‘oh boy, they’re right here,’” he recalled of the “all-star” workforce that sprang into motion to nab a terrific white.

“We reeled the boat to the fish, not the fish to the boat…after an hour and a half, that fish was like ‘f–ok it, I’ve had sufficient of this s–t’ and it simply charged the boat…All I see is him steaming at us.”

Lastly, after masterful gaffing and angling, the beast fell to the boys of the ocean and was towed again to land.

“The remainder was one large friggin’ celebration,” added Braddick. “Lots of people learn about it, they usually nonetheless discuss it.”

Whereas the legend of Mundus is as everlasting as the ocean, Pat is prepared for a brand new wave and desires to reside a lifetime of her personal slightly than echo household tales, she mentioned.

Nonetheless, there’s one factor Mundus advised his kin that she remembers to at the present time.

“Worry is simply not understanding one thing,” Pat recalled.

“And if you wish to recover from a worry, it’s important to achieve competency in it.”