One hundred years ago this month, as the Battle of the Somme raged, US President Woodrow Wilson was ensconced in his summer residence in Asbury Park, New Jersey, on the lovely Edwardian coast where the power elite strolled the boardwalk. Although he promised to keep the United States from entering World War One, Wilson proved as powerless as the man who “kept us out of war,” his campaign slogan, as he was at keeping Americans out of the water.

Swimming offshore was a sea creature, then largely unknown to science and a mere infant, a ‘Sea Monster’ some 9ft (2.7m) long with jagged baby teeth, that would briefly displace the war and Mr Wilson in the headlines, and in time make a bigger splash than either in the peculiar annals of US popular culture, becoming the first blockbuster movie star, and ensuring the Great White Shark would be remembered when the Great War was forgotten.