Ben Gardner
Ben Gardner is a local charter boat captain and fisherman in the resort community of Amity, Long Island. He is a professional who knows the waters intimately, and his livelihood depends on the summer tourist season. When Police Chief Martin Brody, under pressure from Mayor Larry Vaughan and the town's selectmen, seeks a way to kill the great white shark that has already killed three people, he turns to Gardner. Brody arranges for the town to charter Gardner's boat, the Flicka, for a day or two, with Vaughan promising to secure the necessary funds. Gardner is the expert sent to confront the menace, a man whose trade is the sea and its creatures.
The Fatal Expedition
Gardner sets out alone on Thursday morning, June 24, after his mate is forced to cancel due to an impacted wisdom tooth. He takes his boat to a spot several miles offshore and begins chumming—spreading fish guts and blood in the water to attract the shark. Brody, watching from the beach with binoculars, notices that Gardner's boat appears motionless for hours. Concerned, Brody and Officer Len Hendricks borrow a small AquaSport and motor out to investigate. When they reach the Flicka, they find it anchored and deserted. There are no rods in the rod-holders, no sign of Gardner, and the radio is still on, contradicting the theory that he might have turned it off. A bucket of chum sits nearly full in the stern, unused.
Evidence of the Attack
Brody and Hendricks discover clear signs of a violent struggle. On the starboard gunwale, they find four ragged screw holes where a steel cleat has been torn out, the wood splintered as if by immense force. Nearby, an eight-inch-long sear marks where the paint has been scraped away and the wood abraded, consistent with a heavy rope pulled under extreme tension. At the stern, Brody notices deep gouges in the wooden transom, forming a rough semicircle more than three feet across, with a second similar pattern beside it. At the waterline, there are three short smears of blood. Hendricks, lowered over the transom, extracts a nearly two-inch-long triangle of glistening white denticle from one of the holes—a shark tooth so sharp it cuts the wood when scraped against it. The evidence is conclusive: the shark attacked the boat itself, and Gardner is gone.
Aftermath and Significance
Brody returns to shore and delivers the grim news to Gardner's wife, Sally. She is initially hopeful, suggesting that another boat might have picked him up, but Brody is forced to tell her that he is almost certainly dead. Sally's grief quickly turns to accusation, echoing the earlier confrontation with Mrs. Kintner: "Why did you send him?" she demands. "This didn't have to happen! You could have stopped it." Brody, already burdened by guilt over the previous deaths, is shaken. The loss of Gardner, a friend and a skilled professional, deepens the town's crisis and underscores the shark's terrifying power. The tooth is later identified by ichthyologist Matt Hooper as belonging to a great white shark of fifteen to twenty feet, weighing five or six thousand pounds. Gardner's death transforms the hunt from a precautionary measure into a desperate necessity, and it ultimately leads Brody to hire the enigmatic captain Quint, whose own boat, the Orca, will become the stage for the final confrontation.
