Hemingway's Thompson submachine gun

(Timeline mine.)

Morning:

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Noon:

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Afternoon:

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Backstory from MachineGunBoards.com:

How did a Thompson submachine gun cause a big rift between Hemingway and Mike Strater during the summer of 1935 in Bimini?

Hemingway acquired the submachine gun from the International Sportsman, William B. Leeds, who was in Bimini aboard his yacht MOANA. Mike, nicknamed the `President,' fishing aboard the Pilar, hooked a 12-foot marlin. While moving the fish towards the boat, the sharks zeroed in on it. Ernest, with his new toy, began to give the sharks bursts from the machine-gun on the pretext he had to defend the marlin from them. The effect was just the reverse. A feeding frenzy ensued. It took another hour to boat the marlin. What was left weighed 500 pounds. A photograph showed over half of the marlin was gone, and what was left was a hollow shell. Hemingway even wrote an article in Esquire Magazine in July, 1935, titled "The President Vanquishes," where he estimated the weight of the fish at near two thousand pounds. But he failed to mention a Thompson sub-machine gun or a shark frenzy. Strater was enraged. Ernest had helped to destroy the biggest marlin Mike had ever hooked.

And this from the Wikipedia summary of The Old Man and the Sea:

While Santiago continues his journey back to the shore, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. The first, a great mako shark, Santiago kills with his harpoon, losing that weapon in the process. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; in total, five sharks are slain and many others are driven away. But the sharks keep coming, and by nightfall the sharks have almost devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head. Finally reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, Santiago struggles on the way to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep sleep.

The funny thing is, these things make me like Hemingway more. Never less.