The Submarine Shark by G-17 Promotions

The Submarine is the name given to a particularly large and aggressive great white shark that is claimed to have dwelled in False Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa, during the 1970s and the 1980s. According to some, it is still there.

Many people have reported encounters with the shark over the past thirty years or so but the story undoubtedly began as a hoax by journalists and then quite unexpectedly grew to have a life of its own and became an urban legend.The tales told about the animal provide an example of an urban legend that can be traced to its origins.

In the early seventies a group of journalists from the Cape Times and the Argus gathered for a few ales at the Tavern of the Seas.^[A dispute arose as to how gullible the average reader really was. A bet was made to the following effect: the journalists would create an entirely fictitious tale about a Brobdingnagian shark in False Bay. It would have certain distinguishing markings and a certain huge length. The tale would be published, in one of the newspapers, with a fake "eye-witness account". The journalists would then sit back and wait until somebody phoned to claim that they had "seen" the fish.

The results stunned everyone involved. The switchboards were immediately jammed with reports of sightings of the shark, or of the exact details of its markings and habits, or of its exact length.