Watson and the Shark

The scene really happened. In 1749, in the harbour of Havana, a 14-year-old cabin boy named Brook Watson dove in for a swim and a shark took his right leg below the knee. His shipmates rowed out and, on the third try, pulled him from the water. He survived, lost the leg, and went on to become a wealthy merchant and eventually Lord Mayor of London. Nearly 30 years later Watson had Copley paint the attack, an American artist working in London. Copley had never seen Havana or a shark, and it shows a little in the fish, but the boy's pale body and the men straining in the boat turned a private trauma into something on the scale of a grand history painting. It was shown at the Royal Academy in 1778.