Dan's Papers -December 19, 2008

Frank Mundus' wooden fishing boat Cricket II will be up for auction on the Internet this winter. It was built in 1947, is 40 feet long, is powered by a 435 horsepower engine that can push it at 14 knots, and is in perfect operating condition. It is in such good condition, in spite of the fact that Mundus hadn't used it regularly in Montauk for nearly 15 years, because filmmakers, who were doing a documentary on this famous fisherman toward the end of his life, paid to have it kept up. The boat has been appraised at $28,000. But even in these hard times, you can probably put a one before the 28 by the time the auction is done. Cricket II is probably the most famous fishing boat of the 20th century.

The auction begins on January 14 and will end on February 4. Those wishing to bid need to post a $5,000 certified check. The boat is currently out of the water on display at Uihlein's Marina in Montauk and those interested are welcome to come down to the marina to have a look and, with permission, board her to see inside.

The Cricket II is being sold with the boat's original fighting chair (used in 1986 to set a world's record for largest fish caught on rod and reel), an aluminum bow pulpit of the sort used to harpoon large fish and a bucket with the word "Monster Mash" on the side, which was the name coined by Mundus to describe the bait concoction he'd throw overboard to attract the sharks.

Mundus invented a whole new kind of deep sea fishing in 1951, when he arrived in Montauk at the age of 25. It involved finding a shark offshore that weighed about as much as a car, harpooning it, then dragging it up to his boat, shooting it in the head with a high powered rifle, lashing it alongside, and then bringing it back through the Montauk Jetties as soon as he could. Even with a 435 horsepower diesel, it would be slow going hauling a fish almost as big as his boat. He'd radio ahead about his arrival time. Often there were large crowds outside Gosman's and other places by the jetties to watch it arrive. Sometimes, the fish were so large they could not be weighed. Montauk had no cable or scale back then to either hoist or weigh anything of that size.

Of course, Mundus had on board rod and reel with heavy line test, so if there were no luck finding a monster, they could still fight with smaller sharks and hang them from the stern after reeling them in. It wasn't quite as dramatic, but it was a pretty good backup plan.

The other Montauk fishing boat captains at that time went out to catch swordfish or tuna that might weigh a whopping, er, 700 pounds. They said Mundus might have his boat lined up with theirs, but what he was doing was not fishing.

Mundus continued to fish out of Montauk for two generations this way. He was loud, annoying and irascible, but also soft hearted, so it was hard to know which was him and which was the act. He certainly was the only fisherman who carried a high-powered rifle around at the dock there.

In 1969, a novelist named Peter Benchley wrote a novel about this obsessed maniac. It was called Jaws and became a best seller. Interestingly, Benchley always denied that his book was based on Mundus. He said it was fiction. Some fiction. Benchley summered in East Hampton, 16 miles from Montauk. The locations in the book were all in the Hamptons. The fishing town was called Hampton Harbor. Not a real place. Yeah.

Seven years after that, Jaws was made into a blockbuster movie that starred Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw, who played Quint the shark-obsessed fishing boat captain who even looked like Mundus. (And who also, in the end, gets eaten by the shark.)

In 1986, Mundus, Donnie Braddick and two other men brought in a 3,400-pound shark which they fought for 10 hours with rod and reel. Although a larger fish was caught off Australia by rod and reel a few years later, Mundus' catch broke the world record at that time.

In 1991, the government decided that all charter boat fishermen, even the ones that had been fishing for 50 years, had to be recertified. Mundus, who was 71 at the time, considered it an affront. When, at the beginning of the test, he was asked, given certain weather conditions, how he might plot a course from Montauk to New London, Connecticut, Mundus said that he'd been doing this half a century, this was the stupidest question he ever heard, issued an expletive, got up and walked out.

Several years earlier, Mundus' wife died. He was living alone for some years at this point. Now, a "retired" captain, he decided to remarry. He met an Englishwoman on the Internet, proposed to her, and they became husband and wife. But they didn't stay in Montauk. Instead, Mundus and Jeanette picked up and bought a spread on the Big Island in Hawaii. It was and still is, about 110 inland acres, and there he and his wife raised farm animals, including giant boars, that weighed upward of 600 pounds each.

Every summer, however, Mundus would come back to Montauk for the month of June. He'd made a long term lease agreement with another fisherman to captain Cricket II, but there was nothing to prevent him from coming back to his beloved Montauk as a "guide." People would pay extra for him to be along.

Today, Montauk holds numerous shark tournaments. Both sport and charter fishermen chase sharks these days, although none go after the monsters as Mundus did.

When Mundus came back from the day's fishing during these recent forays back to Montauk, he'd set up "shop" on the deck of the Star Island Marina at a picnic table, where he'd sell books and brochures and paraphernalia, sign autographs and tell stories about his time as the Monster Man. His most famous book is called Monster Man.

He died last summer in Hawaii at 82, after suffering a heart attack while flying from Montauk back to Hawaii in July.