The Strange Story of the Orca II: The Stunt Boat from Jaws

In the world of seafaring, constructing a boat that ends up sinking an incredible 24 times would typically be seen as a catastrophe. For the team behind the 1975 shark thriller Jaws, it was a sign they had accomplished their mission.

Before the age of CGI, director Steven Spielberg and production designer Joe Alves aimed to bring authenticity to their adaptation of Peter Benchley’s novel—a story about a shark wreaking havoc on the tourist town of Amity Island. This required filming on location in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where they endured five grueling months working with actors and unreliable mechanical sharks. Many scenes revolved around the Orca, the fictional shark-hunting vessel captained by the rugged Quint (Robert Shaw). For sequences where the 42-foot Orca was attacked by the unusually ferocious shark, Alves and his team used the Orca II, a nearly identical replica without a motor but designed to sink on cue. The Orca II dominates the screen during the film’s intense finale, when the shark leaps onto the boat’s stern to attack both the vessel and Quint.

However, the shark wasn’t the only danger the Orca II faced. After being retired from filming, the replica boat spent years being pillaged by Jaws enthusiasts and collectors, despite being on private property. Exasperated, its owners eventually used a chainsaw to dismantle its fiberglass hull, leaving behind only a fragment that later intrigued an archeologist studying its role as a “fictional” artifact.

After being plundered by trespassers and battered by the ocean, did the Orca II evolve into more than just a movie prop? Had it gained cultural significance deserving deeper analysis, or was its importance inflated by the film’s fame? And after nearly 45 years, would anything remain of the Orca II to even study?

From the start, the Orca II might have been the only part of Jaws that performed as planned. The Universal production, initially budgeted at $ million, was helmed by Spielberg, who had won over executives with his TV work and the 1974 film The Sugarland Express. Spielberg and screenwriter Carl Gottlieb reworked Peter Benchley’s script, keeping only the core plot: A shark disrupts tourist season on Amity Island, causing chaos. Police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) teams up with marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and the gruff sailor Quint (Shaw) to defend the town from the aquatic menace. Quint’s boat, the Orca, served as their primary vessel.

Alves explains to Mytour that the necessity for a stunt boat was clear from the outset. “I created 250 storyboards,” he recalls. “We knew the boat had to sink, and there was no way to sink the actual Orca and restore it.”

The functional Orca was a 42-foot ex-lobster boat named the Warlock, discovered by Alves near Marblehead, Massachusetts. The white vessel was repainted in burgundy and black and outfitted with a pulpit and large windows, making it easily recognizable as a shark-hunting boat. It was one of 16 ships used for filming, including barges for towing boats and mechanical sharks, as well as the SS Garage Sale, which provided dressing rooms and restrooms for the cast and crew. Speedboats shuttled people and supplies to and from shore. Despite this fleet, filming on water was notoriously slow, a detail now ingrained in Jaws history.

“It’s incredibly challenging,” says Alves, who contributed to three of the four Jaws films. “The water is unpredictable. We had to secure the boats with four anchors just to keep them steady.” On one occasion, the Orca began taking on water and partially sank. It had to be rescued, dried, and repaired overnight to be ready for filming the next day.

Aware that the original boat couldn’t endure such repeated damage, Alves had the production team create a mold of the Orca and build a fiberglass duplicate. Externally, the Orca II was identical to the Orca; props were swapped between the two as needed. However, its interior was vastly different. Without an engine, it had to be towed into position for filming. To sink it, a crew member would use pneumatic tubes to tilt barrels beneath the hull, allowing water to flood in and submerge the boat. Once the water was pumped out, the barrels would regain buoyancy, bringing the boat back to the surface. The replica was so realistic that production painter Ward Welton once mistook it for the real Orca and tried to start it, only to be baffled by the missing motor.

In addition to the Orca II and other vessels, Alves required skilled boat operators. He discovered a local named Lynn Murphy while overseeing the construction of Quint’s home in Menemsha. “I hired him,” Alves recalls. “He had a small shack where he kept his boat. He was shouting and making a scene. I asked if he knew boats because we needed help.” Lynn and his wife, Susan, joined the production to manage the boats and ensure their proper use. “Lynn was incredibly knowledgeable. He arrived and fixed several issues. We even had him towing the mechanical shark.”

Lynn’s outbursts were nothing out of the ordinary. The former auto mechanic, who ran Menemsha Marine Repair, was well-known in the area for his explosive temper. In 1969, after a heated argument with harbor master Phil Le Vasseur, Lynn famously ended the dispute by throwing him into the harbor.

“He was a rugged, seafaring type,” Alves recalls. According to legend, Spielberg was so captivated by Lynn’s personality that he instructed Shaw to model Quint after him. Alves agrees, noting that Shaw drew inspiration from Lynn and that the two frequently shared drinks after filming wrapped for the day.

(Despite his fiery temper, Lynn was also known for his generosity. He was once praised by then-Senator John F. Kennedy for his courage in securing boats and offering aid during two devastating hurricanes in 1954.)

As grueling as the filming process was, it might have been unmanageable without the contributions of Lynn, Susan, and other locals. What was supposed to wrap up in July extended into August and September. Scenes that would have been straightforward on land were complicated by erratic waters and unexpected challenges. On one occasion, the Orca II sank too effectively, dragging down two Panavision cameras rented by Universal for $24,000 a week. Both cameras were loaded with film. In a desperate attempt to salvage the footage, a crew member submerged the film in a bucket of freshwater to counteract the saltwater damage. He then flew to New York, hoping Kodak could develop it in time. The footage was saved, but the fate of the cameras remains a mystery.

As filming neared its conclusion, the Orca II was prepped for its most dramatic scene. In the climactic showdown between man and shark, the mechanical beast (nicknamed “Bruce” after Spielberg’s lawyer, Bruce Ramer) was supposed to “leap” onto the stern, crushing it and devouring Quint in the process. Alves had crafted multiple breakaway sterns for the Orca II using balsa wood. “We had three sterns,” he explains. “I wish we’d had four. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with how the shark landed. Balsa wood was scarce on Martha’s Vineyard, so we had to ship it in from Los Angeles.”

By September, Spielberg had completed principal photography. Alves and a few others remained for additional shots, including one final sinking of the Orca II. Once filming wrapped, the crew quickly dispersed. Little thought was given to whether the movie would succeed, and even less attention was paid to preserving the props or production materials.

“The studio didn’t care at all,” Alves remarks. The Orca was sent to Hollywood, where it was purchased by a special effects technician for $13,000, who planned to use it for swordfishing. The Orca II, however, was abandoned.

Lynn Murphy saw potential in the Orca II, but not as a collectible. As the owner of a salvage business, his property along Menemsha Creek was cluttered with discarded boats and vehicles, including the SS Garage Sale and three barges used in the film. He bought the Orca II from Universal for a symbolic $1, intending to repurpose its fiberglass for a shed. The replica had no practical use, as it wasn’t a functional boat.

“It was just a prop,” Susan, Lynn’s wife, tells Mytour. “It had no hull. Nothing could make it float. It wasn’t seaworthy. The only thing keeping it afloat were the tanks filled for sinking scenes. That’s how it could sink on command. The only reason he got it was because they practically gave it away.”

Lynn hauled the Orca II to his private waterfront but soon encountered a problem. The shed he planned to construct was denied approval by local building officials. With no practical use for the replica, he left it untouched on the shore. The Orca II was visible from Menemsha’s shoreline, but for the remainder of 1974 and into 1975, it drew little attention. However, when Jaws premiered in June 1975, everything changed.

The movie became Hollywood’s first true summer blockbuster, shattering box office records and reigning as the highest-grossing film until Star Wars debuted two years later. Overnight, Martha’s Vineyard transformed from a vacation spot to a destination for fans seeking Amity Island. Lynn Murphy’s boat was no longer just a piece of discarded fiberglass but the iconic Orca II, its mast standing tall for all to see. Visitors assumed it was there for their entertainment.

“It started being picked apart,” Susan recalls. Fans of the film—later dubbed “finatics”—began arriving by boat and dismantling the Orca II, pulling out nails, planks, and anything else they could remove by hand. Soon, the pulpit, mast, and fly bridge had vanished. 

“I’ve known people who went over and took pieces,” Jim Beller, a Jaws historian and collector, tells Mytour. “They weren’t sure if it was the right thing to do.” According to Beller, some took souvenirs and later felt remorse.

“Sometimes we called the police,” Susan recalls. “They would intercept people on the other side of the harbor after they left with stolen items and arrest them for trespassing and theft.” Some visitors came at night, using flashlights. Despite the Murphys posting “No Trespassing” signs, they had little effect. A strange sense of entitlement seemed to drive fans to dismantle the Orca II, bit by bit. It’s surprising that Lynn Murphy, known for his short temper, never ended up in a physical altercation with any of them.

“Lynn probably shouted at them to stay away from the boat,” Susan says. “But I don’t think he ever threw anyone overboard or got violent.”

This continued for years; the Orca II appeared destined to be stripped apart. Susan explains that moving it elsewhere wasn’t feasible. It had arrived by water, and there was no suitable location to relocate it. Its size made it impossible to move inland or display indoors. Already partially dismantled, Universal showed little interest, despite scrambling to repurchase the Orca from the special effects technician after the film’s success. They reportedly paid 10 times the original price to feature it in the Jaws ride at Universal Studios.

With no alternatives, the Murphys could only watch as the Orca II was further dismantled by fans and eroded by saltwater. Even the Far Star, a boat unrelated to Jaws but located nearby, fell victim to souvenir hunters, causing confusion about which boat was the real replica. Some visitors even posed for photos, proudly showcasing their ill-gotten trophies.

“People get carried away,” Susan remarks. “They believe they can take whatever they want. They weren’t respectful to the movie they claimed to admire.”

The final straw came in 2005 when the Murphys learned that Martha’s Vineyard would be hosting Jawsfest, a weekend event celebrating all things Jaws. Fans were expected to flock to the island in unprecedented numbers, likely targeting what remained of the Orca II like a swarm.

The Murphys had reached their limit. “Once we cut it up,” Susan says, “it was over.”

Using a chainsaw, the Murphys cut what was left of the fiberglass hull into 1000 one-foot squares, hastening the Orca II’s demise. Fans could now purchase these pieces as souvenirs, complete with certificates of authenticity from the Murphys. The fragments sold quickly, with one reportedly fetching $1850 on eBay.

In 2011, the Murphys partnered with co-authors Beller and Matt Taylor to include small fragments of the Orca II in a limited edition of Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard, a book detailing the film’s production and their role in it. “After the book’s release, people began to appreciate our contribution to the movie more,” Susan says. “I don’t hold grudges. I’ve moved on from the struggles we faced protecting the Orca II.”

This seemed to mark the end of the Orca II’s presence on the shore. However, at least one individual remained intrigued by its remnants.

The Jaws craze that swept the nation in 1975 left a lasting impression on P.J. Capelotti. At 14, he saw the film seven times in one week at a $1 theater. “It’s one of those movies you can watch over and over,” Capelotti tells Mytour.

Now an anthropology professor at Penn State Abington, Capelotti sought a project less demanding than his previous archaeological endeavors. In 2015, his daughter showed him a Boston Globe article marking the 40th anniversary of Jaws. “It featured photos of two Orcas, one real and one a replica,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘Cool.’ As a Jaws enthusiast, I knew exactly where it was.”

Capelotti wasn’t after a souvenir but aimed to evaluate the site, which had become an unexpected archaeological location, for a chapter in his 2018 book, Adventures in Archaeology. “I wanted to see what remained,” he says. By May 2017, Lynn Murphy had passed away, and the property had been sold to the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank, eventually transferring to a Native American tribe. Accessing the land required permission from the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). Capelotti secured approval through a contact at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. After a 45-minute ferry ride to Vineyard Haven and a 45-minute drive to West Basin Road, he hiked 45 minutes across salt marshes and dunes to find the final resting place of the Orca II.

Above the sand and shallow water, only six stanchions from the metal framework beneath the hull, which held the barrels, remained. The structure measured 18 feet, 6 inches long and 8 feet wide. Fragments of the pneumatic tubing used for sinking were also present. Nearby, the remnants of the Far Star continued to decay, though it still resembled a boat. About 60 feet away lay the SS Garage Sale, the utility vessel from filming. All that was left were bits of rubber, metal, and faint outlines in the sand. Anything buried deeper remained untouched. “I didn’t have permission to dig into the sand,” Capelotti explains.

If not for exposure and overenthusiastic fans, the Orca II and its fiberglass frame might have outlasted the original Orca, which vanished from the Jaws ride in 1996 and was believed to have decayed so severely that it sank and broke in half during a salvage attempt.

With the Orca II reduced to its skeletal remains, Capelotti saw more than just the remnants of a movie prop. It served as a reminder of how fragile cultural artifacts can be.

“Most archaeological sites we study have been gradually diminished over time,” he says. “For example, stone from the Roman Coliseum was taken during the Middle Ages to build homes in Rome.”

Susan Murphy still sells pieces of the Orca II, mounted in shadowboxes for $130 plus shipping. They continue to sell steadily, and Susan notes she has enough stock to meet demand for years to come. Buying one requires imagination, as the unpainted fiberglass fragments bear little resemblance to the iconic vessel that helped defeat one of cinema’s most fearsome villains.

“I own a large piece of the red section from the Orca II, but it’s unrecognizable now,” Beller remarks.

Had the Orca II survived intact, Capelotti thinks it could have fetched an extraordinary price from collectors. “Dorothy’s ruby slippers [from The Wizard of Oz] are valued at millions,” he says. “Imagine the worth of something like the Orca II.”

Occasionally, Beller mentions discussions among fans about constructing a full-scale replica. However, no one has taken on such a costly and ambitious endeavor. So far, nothing has materialized, and the Orca II exists only in film and photographs. Yet, it hasn’t been entirely forgotten.

Recently, at Shark Con, Alves was approached by a father and daughter who handed him a small metal fragment. “What’s this?” he asked. They explained they had visited West Basin Road—likely without tribal approval—and taken what they thought was a piece of the Orca II. This time, however, the outcome was different.

“They handed it over to me,” Alves recalls.

Additional Source: Adventures in Archaeology.