Arguably, there are no other ocean critters feared as much as sharks. Sharks can be dangerous but they aren't the ruthless killers they are often portrayed to be. In reality, if you do head into the sea you are more likely to die from cardiac arrest or drowning than from a shark attack. 

Peter Benchley's Jaws (made into a movie by Steven Spielberg) famously thrust sharks - particularly great white sharks - into the public eye, portraying them as fierce adversaries who are hell-bent on hunting us down. But as William Henry Venable's 1909 poem The Shark illustrates, we have feared sharks long before Jaws made its debut on the silver screen...

The Shark has been reproduced here under the Public Domain licence.