In many room , cooking is just chemistry . You combine acids , base , proteins , and various other chemical , and subject them to a 10000 of unlike forcible and chemical processes like freeze , heat , mixing , and blending – it ’s all classic lab stuff , but with patty at the oddment rather than , say , five kilos of primo coke .
This is why itshouldn’tbethatsurprising that Julia Child , the iconic American James Cook and TV personality , once work for American intelligence on a wartime project to contrive and create an effective shark repellent .
But it definitelyis , right ?
Julia Child, war spy
Julia McWilliams , as she was known at the time , was just a 29 - yr - older copywriter in New York when the US joined World War II . By herown admission , she was n’t even in particular concerned in cooking at the time – having originate up with a family chef , the skill was simply something she had never learn .
In fact , she wanted to be a novelist . However , with the bombardment of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 , her plan changed . She decided to join up with the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service ( WAVES ) – a branch of the Navy and Women ’s Army Auxiliary Corps ( WAAC ) in the Army .
There was just one problem : at 6 groundwork 2 ( 1.88 metre ) magniloquent , she was deemed too marvellous to be take on . rather , she applied to the newly - created Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ) – the organization which would finally become the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) .
“ Good impression , pleasant , alert , subject , very tall,”read the notesfrom her consultation for the job , only declassified in 2008 . And with that , Ms McWilliams was engage as a junior research helper for the OSS – a position which , despite the job form of address , mostly involvedtyping the epithet and addresses of government officials on index card .
It must have been fabulously boring , anddeclassified OSS filesreveal McWilliams ’s recollection of having “ typed over 10,000 little white menu and put in for a transfer . ” fortuitously , her education and experience soon got her a new ( and much more exciting ) office within the authority : function under Captain Harold J. Coolidge in the Special Projects Division of the Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment ( ERE ) Section of the OSS .
In a time beset byNazis , biological warfare , and thecreeping threat of atomic weapons , there was one issue the agency saw as particularly troubling : the rampant threat of shark attacks .
The original sharkmania
We ordinarily cogitate ofJawsas responsible for the world ’s corporate unreason over shark attacks – effect which , it buy the farm without saying , areincredibly rareandfar outnumberedbyhuman attackson sharks .
However , there was another , in the beginning , sharkmania that swept the US . “ World War II play a pivotal part in foment the nation ’s obsession with shark , ” University of Texas at Austin Distinguished Teaching Professor of American Studies Janet M. Davis explain in an article forThe Conversationback in 2021 . “ The monumental wartime mobilization of billion of hoi polloi placed more Americans into contact with sharks than at any prior time in history , spreading seeds of machination and fear toward the marine predators . ”
Like any adept national mass hysteria , the media soon locked into the style , with local newspapers across the US running frequent stories about bomb ships and aircraft bind at the mercy of the supposedly fearsome beasts . “ Journalists consistently described imperiled man who were rescued or dying in ‘ shark - infested waters , ’ Davis remark . “ Whether sharks were visibly present or not , these news program article overdraw a growing ethnical anxiety of ubiquitous giant lurking and poise to kill . ”
The fear was so intense that it even influenced US military tactics . For most of the war , for model , the Lockheed P-38 was the chief retentive - range battler aircraft of United States Army Air Forces in the southwest Pacific theater , due in at least some part to its perceived lower jeopardy of shark onrush : General George Kenney , commander of the Allied Air Forces in the field , supported aircraft ’s role specifically because its duplicate engines and foresightful mountain range diminished the risk of conk out down over open water .
“ You wait down from the cockpit and you may see schools of sharks swimming around , ” hereportedly said . “ They never look healthy to a man flying over them . ”
Before long , the national preoccupation with sharks and shark attacks had become such a problem that U.S. Army and Navy intelligence operations had to launchpublicity campaignsto combat the mass galeophobia . “ Shark yarns needs become grandiloquent stories,”advisedthe 1942Castaway ’s Baedeker to the South Seas , a guide for military personnel in the Pacific theatre release by the US Navy .
“ Of the sixteen species of shark , only one , the tiger shark , is a serious threat to a man swim in the water and your chances of meet one of them are not gravid , ” it reassured readers . “ In general the shark is [ … ] reluctant to attack any prey other than his common dieting of lowly fish – and there are mass of Pisces to keep him well fed . ”
An unfounded fear?
Despite this rage , shark attacks were barely a uncouth occurrence , withonly 20 recordedacross three years of wartime . So why was the OSS – and their young recruit Julia McWilliams – so invested in finding a working shark repellent ?
In part , the task was just a prolongation of the Navy ’s public outreach to leave some pacification of mind to serviceman worried about being eaten by a shipboard soldier monster . However , there was a genuine military indigence behind the research , too : the OSS was concerned by reports that sharks , blissfully unaware of human conflicts , had been by chance setting off naval explosives meant for enemy ships and U - boats .
Researchers tested over 100 different heart over the year the project was prevail , with efforts focusing on attempt to double the olfactory sensation of a beat shark . attack ranged from the obvious , like decayed shark substance , to the artificial and chemically complex – but in the end , the squad settled on a mixture consisting mainly of copper color acetate and ignominious dye . The estimate was doubled : the bull ethanoate , it was think , would repulse the shark , while the dyestuff would blot out any struggling Jack from the potentially thirsty marauder .
“ The limited nigrosine dye component produce a black cloud visible to the user and was say to mime the natural defensive secretion of marine mollusc such as the squid and devilfish , ” explains a 2001 paper , print in the journalEnvironmental Biology of Fishes , on the history of shark repellents .
“ The copper acetate element served two extra functions . First , it was recognized that copper ions inhibited the feeding of teleost fish fishes , and second , ammonium ion acetate , a major component in molder shark flesh , was also shown to be a feeding handicap in the dogfish , ” the paper continues . “ It was therefore concluded that the combination of cop and acetate ions would get an increased baulk effect . ”
In fact , the “ Shark Chaser ” , as the concoction was dubbed , was not all that good – the achiever rate was only a petty over 60 percent , and it bomb to carry through those killed by sharks after the nightmare that was thesinking of theUSS Indianapolis .
However , the invention nevertheless had an crucial positive issue on the flavor of servicemen scared of buy the farm down in the Pacific , Samuel Gruber , then a life scientist at the University of Miami , toldABC Newsin 2004 . “ You ’re flying around World War II and some form of airplane shoots you down and you have something on your chest of drawers , ” he explain . “ It say ‘ shark pursuer . ’ Whether it shape or not , it did a marvelous amount for the morale of the pilots . ”
succeeder or not , her employment on the Shark Chaser projection evidently leave its patsy on the untried Julia – shewould laterrefer to the repellent as the “ first recipe ” in her cookery career .
“ We designed deliverance kits and other agent appurtenance , ” Child recite fellow OSS Officer Betty McIntosh during an audience for the bookSisterhood of Spies .
“ I must say we had rafts of fun . ”
