Legend Is Hoisted From Sea
Cricket tugged great whites to shore
 Russell Drumm
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(9/25/2008) Cricket II, the charter boat built for Capt. Frank Mundus in 1946, whose deck, gin pole, and stern bits held some of the largest fish landed in these parts over the last half century, was hauled from the water in Montauk on Tuesday, perhaps never to return.
Captain Mundus died on Sept. 10 in Hawaii during heart surgery. Just five days earlier, he had spent his last night in Montauk sleeping aboard his old friend.
There was a Cricket I, a boat that Frank and his brother Louis chartered after Louis left the Army in 1945. The partnership did not last long. When it dissolved, Frank decided to go it alone.
 Russell Drumm
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Cricket II was built in Virginia by a Chesapeake bayman named Tiffany Cockrell with the low-decked and beamy design of the oyster dredge boats that worked the big estuary. Captain Mundus said the boat builder told him he had never seen the Atlantic Ocean and built Cricket four times stronger than he needed to out of his imagination’s respect for the sea.
Cricket’s keel was made from a length of yellow-leaf pine measuring 10-by-12-inches thick and cut from the heart of the tree. According to Captain Mundus, Mr. Cockrell had told the trucker who brought the wood that if there was a knot anywhere on it, not to bother unloading.
There was no knot and the keel was notched into Cricket’s stem piece and transom. Ribs were placed close together for extra strength. Two-inch oak planking went over the ribs, with another two inches on top of that. Later, a half-inch layer of plywood was added as a skin to which fiberglass roving and mat were added. Captain Mundus often stayed with Cricket as she was being finished, throwing a tarp over the hull for shelter while he slept.
When she was finally ready, Captain Mundus drove to Virginia from Brielle, N.J., in a Model A Ford. He said, he reasoned that because someone would have had to drive him down and drive the car back, he would instead put the Model A on Cricket’s back deck and bring the car back by sea. So, he pulled the boat close to an embankment, tied her to trees by her stern bits to hold her close, made a ramp out of planks from Mr. Cockrell’s boatyard, and drove the car up to the stern. He laid planks across the boat, port and starboard.
“Then, when I got it over the top where I want it, I put a jack on it, jacked it up, took the planks out, dropped the ass down, got the front end down, gave the planks back to the boatyard, took the air out of the tires, and away we went,” the captain said in a 1996 interview.
Cricket arrived in Brielle later than expected. Captain Mundus found his charters, a group of mackerel fishermen, waiting on the dock. He told them that under the circumstances he was going to have to cancel Cricket’s first charter, but they insisted on fishing, Model A or not. “When we anchored up and started fishin’, why, my guys were sittin’ on the fenders, on the hood. They was all over throwin’ mackerel all over the place,” Captain Mundus said.
Cricket was slow but steady with a peaceful center in large seas. She was repowered at least three times. Her first engine was a four-cylinder Superior diesel. Over the years she gained cylinders and horsepower, but insisted on her original ten-knot pace.
In July 1951, Captain Mundus, his wife, Janet, and their 2-year-old daughter, Bobby, climbed on board and headed for Montauk’s Fishangri-la dock on Fort Pond Bay. In August of the same year, she helped search for victims when the party boat Pelican capsized off Montauk Point.
Over the years, sharks were attracted to Cricket by underwater speakers that sent music and sound effects into the deep, by firecrackers lit and tossed overboard, by banging on Cricket’s deck, but most productively, by “monster mash,” gruel made of ground fish (sometimes ground pilot whale before the 1986 whaling moratorium) that was ladled into the sea from Cricket’s wooden chum box. The box was affixed inboard on the starboard rail. The shark fisherman was fussy about his chum, and how it was presented.
Cricket had a mast. If currents made it necessary, Captain Mundus hoisted a staysail to keep the boat pointed into the wind so that she would remain broadside to her chum slick as the oily sheen drifted away toward the horizon.
The boat had a bow pulpit for harpooning. In later years, “side pulpits,” or catwalks, were added on both port and starboard sides to make it easier to present baits to the sharks attracted by the chum. The pulpits made for better picture taking as well.
The sharks the charter boat carried, or in a few cases dragged — when lifting them out of the water was out of the question — have become legendary. There were at least ten over 1,000 pounds. The first was taken off Amagansett in 1961, the second in the same year near Block Island. The biggest was the 4,500-pounder harpooned and dragged back to Montauk tied to Cricket’s stainless steel stern bits.
One big white tried to bite a plank out of Cricket. Captain Mundus said the shark “didn’t like what was goin’ on so he just rolled around and grabbed the side where it meets the bottom. He went ruff and hung on, twisting his body, and you could hear the teeth breakin’ off like rifle shots.”
The last shark, “Big Boy,” the 3,450-pound white shark caught by Captain Mundus and Donnie Braddick in 1986, was hooked while feeding on a dead and floating whale. White sharks were put off-limits to both commercial and sport fishermen in 1997.
Cricket was hauled out at Uihlein’s Marina. Henry Uihlein worked the travel hoist. He said he had known the boat and her captain his whole life. “I just got a funny feeling. Like I was back when I was a boy,” he said as he mounted the hoist to lift the legendary charter boat from Montauk Harbor.
Mr. Uihlein said it was not clear what would become of Cricket. For now she will rest at the marina.