Ben Gardner's Mate: The Forgotten Victim In Jaws?

We all know the sad tale of the ‘forgotten victim’ in Jaws. Poor Pipit the dog! One minute living your best life in the surf, the next nothing but a floating stick to mark your passing.

But is there another forgotten victim? A human victim?

I have been a fan of Jaws since watching the film for the first time on the television in 1980. Since then, like most people reading this, I’ve seen it multiple times on multiple formats: VHS, DVD, Bluray DVD, Ultra 4k DVD…… But I’m ashamed to say that until this month, I had never seen it on the big screen. The recent IMAX and ‘Real 3D’ showings across the UK finally gave me the opportunity to see the film as it was intended, so tickets were booked and family dragged along (with promises to my teenage daughter that no, I wouldn’t sit there reciting the script).

Now, maybe it was seeing the film in all its cinematic glory that made me spot something that I hadn’t seen in 100+ TV/DVD viewings. This has led me to conclude that there may be a sixth human victim of The Shark.

Let’s talk about Ben Gardner, he of the infamous ‘head-popping-out-the-boat’ scene. To understand the ‘Sixth Human Victim’ theory, you need to go back to his other scenes. When we first see Ben, it’s when the various fishermen and hunters are turning up at Amity Harbour to hunt The Shark, having responded to Mrs Kintner’s ad and promised reward. Ben greets Matt Hooper as he arrives on the island, checking that he’s “not going out with those nuts, are ya?”

Ben is clearly an experienced fisherman and boatsman, and is dismayed at the antics of the shark hunters. In his next scene, he’s joining the flotilla of boats as they head out to sea with their barrels of chum and sticks of dynamite. In dialogue akin to later rants from Quint, he worries that they’re going to smash into rocks or his own boat.

But what’s this? Look again at that scene. There is someone else on Ben’s boat!

A number of the actors in Jaws were uncredited. A quick search of IMDB shows various people listed as ‘boat captain’, ‘fisherman’ or just ‘man’, so this could be Jerome S Tartar or Francis A Frank or any one of the many Martha’s Vineyard extras that Steven Spielberg used. But all we know is, like Ben Gardner, he is never seen again.

When the bozos catch the tiger shark (“A whaaaaaaaat?”), Martin Brody’s first question is “Did Ben Gardner get this?”. He’s obviously held in high regard in the community, but he’s not there and doesn’t appear in the subsequent photo taken for the press – unusual as he’d surely know that the islanders have “caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers”. As we now know, Ben’s boat is somewhere further offshore, either being attacked or certainly on The Shark’s imminent menu.

So did our Mystery Man get off Ben’s boat before it was attacked? Did he jump to another boat? Did Ben return to shore and drop him off? Is Mystery Man really a serial killer and Ben wasn’t killed by The Shark at all? (Sorry, that’s verging into another theory).

Or did Mystery Man die during the attack on Ben’s boat too and become the film’s Sixth Human Victim*? In which case, The Shark must have eaten him whole, right down to his navy pullover. When Matt Hooper investigates the hole in Ben’s boat, it’s only one head that pops out. He doesn’t mention other remains and when Brody and Hooper are talking about Ben to Larry Vaughan the next day, Brody says, “You should have seen him!”. Note “him”, not “them”.

Mystery Man being eaten first might also explain why Hooper finds Ben’s head. Whilst a shark’s digestive system is fairly robust, they have been known to regurgitate food or undigestible material – particularly in high stress situations. If we imagine the scene on Ben’s boat: Mystery Man at the back, possibly chumming. The Shark appears, but MM’s reactions aren’t as fast as Brody’s and he’s pulled overboard and devoured. Ben sees this and attempts to fight back, but slips and also ends up as shark food. But The Shark is now feeling the stress of Ben’s fightback (and is also full from its earlier meal of Mystery Man), so it regurgitates the remains of Ben for Hooper to find later.

Or maybe Mystery Man survived, met Pipit swimming in the sea, and they both lived out long and happy lives away from Amity.

I guess we’ll never know for sure.

(*Actually, if we’re going in strict chronological order, he would be the Third Human Victim and Quint would be number 6).

About the author:

Kate Dapré lives on the North Ayrshire coast in Scotland, and has been a Jaws fan since watching the film in her PJs, aged 7, and deciding she felt sorry for the shark. She went on to learn how to scuba dive and fulfilled a lifetime ambition of diving with great whites in the early 2000s. Her day job is in sustainability where she tries to ensure that people don’t destroy the planet in the name of profit. In her spare time, she can be found walking her rescue dog, Max, on the local beach and hoping that he doesn’t meet the same fate as Pipit.

Words by Kate Dapre

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