Quint Bio
Orca email
Quint, M. (Marion)
Abbreviated biography :
Date of Birth: 9 Aug 1927
In october of
1946, Quint acquired a boat that he
christened "Orca", choosing to name his
boat after the largest sea mammal in the
ocean...the only thing a shark couldnt beat. He
cherished this vessel -- and was quite proud of
its capabilities as a sharking boat.
After arriving on the Island for seasonal fishery
labor in the pre-war years, Quint found it difficult
to find a social niche and quickly became the Islands
most notorious hermit. As skilled labor Quint found
plenty of hard work scraping barnacles and carving up whales. For
locals Quint was the go to when there was work no one else wanted to take on.
Before long,
On his twentieth birthday, a friend took him to
a mainland pub to celebrate. There, he met his
second wife to be, Mary Burgess whom he lost
contact with during his time at war in the Pacific, where Quint's
future would be forever changed...
Returning home to dry land and in a mental state of confusion,
Quint decided to avoid the drudgery of repairing other peoples boats
in order to persue his rage filled desire to become a full time shark fisherman.
Out on the Massachussetts Bay, while fishing,
Quint unexpectedly caught a ten foot tiger shark...the same kind
of shark he saw kill most of his shipmates from
the Indy in '45. When he pulled this shark up onto the boat and
bludgeoned it to death, he felt a strange
exhileration...it was as if, while beating the life
out of this aquatic predator, all of his pent up
anger, frustration and sadness were being
released in a deluge of tears and exhilaration. He'd finally found the emotional
release he'd been searching for for so long
and it felt good...*really* good and it quickly
became an addiction to him. He immediately
wanted to kill _more_ sharks and then
_more_sharks. All of his anger came out onto
these poor sea creatures and he couldnt get
enough. Soon, he was spending almost all of his
time out on the water, looking only for sharks.
His appetite for release was unquenchable and
it eventually caused a rift in his second
marriage. On november the 11th, 1948, Mary
(Burgess) Quint filed for a divorce on the
grounds of "abandonment". They had no
children, either.
From 1947 until 1955, Quint
was content with being alone, a "free agent",
sailing a good many different places throughout
the world, fishing, telling shark stories to
other sailors and fishermen, hopping from port
to port. In the late summer of 1955, he docked
in San Francisco, near the Presidio and
Chinatown. It was at the fishmarket, on the
wharf, where he met Elaine Mason, the one
true love of his life. She was a pretty little
thing, about five and a half feet tall and
weighing only about 110 pounds, with long, dark
hair and big, blue eyes and a voice that sounded
like some exotic, melodic tune to Quints ears.
Her smile was so beautiful that it haunted him
wherever he went. He fell in love with her right
away, Quint pleaded with
her to come and live with him on Amity Island where
the tourist trade for shark jaws might be worth sumthin'.
She didnt see it the same way and dissapeared into the
dark one night after going out for a night on the town
with a drinkn' buddy of Quints'. As a result after
downing what had to of been at least 30 shots of whiskey straight up, Quint
challenged the local Pub bouncer Wing Ho Lu to a $1000
arm wrestlin' match costing Quint torn ligiments and
the use of major arm flexibility. This Maledy and
misfortune helped send Quint to sink further into the
realm of excentric hermit.
By late June of 1975, having built by hand a working
'sharkery' which would provide Quint a base of
operations for an extended stay on Amity Island from which to strike out at sharks in the region that dare stake a claim.
Over the next several years Quint had earned quite a reputation as a 'shark
killer' (or "sharker", as he preferred to be
called), so it was of little wonder why the Mayor of
Amity Island made use of Quint to help
eliminate an unusually large squalis that had
been attacking (and devouring) the summer
tourist trade. On june the 29th, 1975, thirty
years to the day, ironically, the same date Quint had won his
first battle of survival with against overwhelming numbers of sharks, Quint lost
himself to what now seems his destiny to that of a Great White Shark, overwhelming in size and a foe like none other Quint had expected to encounter.
The monstrous sized shark that attacked and took
Marion Quint was destroyed but not by Quint. There was
a small memorial at sea for Mr. Quint, given by
the Amity Island Sheriff who had first
commissioned him. Chief Martin Brody, along
with several members of the Amity Island
township, including the Mayor and towns
council, set off on July 18th, 1975, at 10:30am, 17
miles
SSE off of the east Amity shore line, in what
was estimated to be where Mr. Quint's boat,
the "Orca" sank into legend.
Edited by Fred Stine
Based on a transcription provided by Sherry Post (the author known as Quintessence)
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