The Sea Claimed Its Own: The Disappearance of David Kenyon Webster
On the morning of September 9, 1961, David Kenyon Webster set sail from Santa Monica pier in his 11-foot sailing dinghy, the Tusitala—a name borrowed from the Tahitians' affectionate term for Robert Louis Stevenson, meaning "teller of tales." He had rigged bait, heavy line, and hook, planning an afternoon of shark fishing off the Southern California coast. By evening, when his wife Barbara arrived at the pier to help him beach the boat, Webster had not returned. He never would.
The disappearance of David Kenyon Webster represents one of the most poignant losses in American literary history—a promising writer whose passion for the sea ultimately claimed him at age 39, leaving behind a grieving family and a literary legacy that would only be fully recognized decades after his death.
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| Artistic Interpretation of David Kenyon Webster | BookBrains Press |
A Writer Forged by War
Webster's path to literary recognition began in the crucible of World War II. Born on June 2, 1922, he left Harvard after just one semester, driven by both patriotic duty and a writer's desire to witness history firsthand (Hill 2020). Enlisting in 1942, he trained with the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, eventually serving with the legendary Easy Company immortalized in Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers.
Webster's wartime service reads like scenes from the epic miniseries that would later feature his story. During D-Day, he landed alone and far off course near Utah Beach, wounded just days later. He jumped into Holland during Operation Market Garden, where enemy fire struck him in no-man's land near Arnhem. According to accounts, Webster's reaction to being shot—"I'm hit, I can't believe I said that"—captured both the surreal and deeply personal nature of combat (Hill 2020).
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| David Kenyon Webster in Eindhoven, 18 September 1944, The Netherlands | Public Domain |
But it was Webster's own words that best captured the terror and chaos of those moments. Writing to his brother John about D-Day, he described his fear with stark honesty: "I was scared almost speechless" as tracers and flares lit up the night sky outside the transport plane. When the green light came on and he jumped, "all I could see was water, water, everywhere. I came down so fast I didn't have time to take off my reserve and landed on my face in about three feet of water. Scared? I was shaking all over" (Webster 2021).
While recovering in England, Webster missed the Battle of the Bulge but rejoined his unit in February 1945. He witnessed the liberation of Landsberg Concentration Camp, an experience that left an indelible mark on his understanding of human cruelty and resilience. These wartime experiences would later fuel his most significant literary contribution.
The brutality he witnessed transformed his understanding of the enemy. "Until we jumped on France, I had thought the German a clean fighter. Now I know better," he wrote to his parents. "They caught some of our boys in their harnesses, cut their throats, hung them, bayoneted them, stripped them and shot them" (Webster 2021). Such experiences would shape both his worldview and his unflinching approach to dangerous pursuits.
The Writer's Eye in Combat
Webster's letters home revealed not just a soldier's experiences, but a writer's keen eye for detail and character. Even in the army's routine miseries, he found material worth recording. His fellow soldiers included "lying men," "dirty men," and "disgruntled men," but also those with "a fine sense of humor" who could "joke about the bad side of camp" (Webster 2021). This ability to find both humanity and humor in harsh circumstances—describing army equipment distribution as making "every day seem like Christmas"—would serve him well as both a combat veteran and a journalist.
Perhaps most tellingly, Webster offered hard-won advice to his brother about combat survival: "If you ever go into combat, don't let the noise scare you and never get so terrified that you lie in your foxhole or refuse to move. Always keep going, always keep alert" (Webster 2021). This philosophy of confronting fear rather than surrendering to it would later manifest in his willingness to study sharks by swimming among them.
The Making of a Maritime Enthusiast
After the war, Webster transitioned into journalism, working for prestigious publications including The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Daily News, and The Saturday Evening Post (Hill 2020). But it was his deep connection to the sea that would define both his personal life and his tragic end.
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| Artistic Interpreation of David Kenyon Webster With Surfboard | BookBrains Press |
Webster's maritime passion ran in his blood. His great-grandfather had been a shipbuilder on Scotland's River Clyde, and his grandfather brought the family around Cape Horn by sailing vessel to San Francisco in 1856. His father spent much of his career in a Wall Street office, binoculars in hand, tracking ship arrivals and departures (Webster 1962).
As his wife Barbara later wrote in the foreword to his posthumously published shark book, Webster was "endlessly preoccupied" with the sea's "beauty and mystery." The couple spent their spare time "near, in or on the ocean," where Dave would surf, explore tide pools, and dive for abalone. His knowledge encompassed tides, currents, marine life, and ships—though for him, a real ship was "one driven by wind and sail, not engines" (Webster 1962).
A Fatal Fascination
Webster's scholarly interest in sharks developed from childhood encounters and stories shared by old sailors and fishermen along the South California coast. For him, sharks became "a symbol of everything that is mysterious and fierce about the sea" (Webster 1962). When existing literature failed to satisfy his thirst for knowledge about these creatures, he began researching material for his own book.
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| Webster, David Kenyon (1972). Myth and maneater: The Story of the Shark. Angus and Robertson |
His methodology was thorough and often dangerous. Webster corresponded with ichthyologists, sportsmen, and commercial fishermen worldwide. More remarkably, he studied sharks firsthand, swimming among them and catching many while fishing from his small sailing dinghy (Webster 1962). This hands-on approach reflected both his journalistic training and his fearless nature—qualities that served him well in war but proved perilous in his maritime pursuits.
This fearless, methodical approach echoed the same mindset that had carried him through combat. Just as he had advised his brother to "always keep going, always keep alert" in battle, Webster applied the same relentless curiosity to understanding the ocean's apex predators (Webster 2021).
The Final Voyage
Barbara Webster's account of her husband's final day carries the weight of both love and loss. On that September morning in 1961, Dave "had rigged bait, a heavy line and hook. He was going shark-fishing" (Webster 1962). When he failed to return that evening, the Coast Guard launched a search with boats and planes. A commercial fishing vessel eventually discovered the Tusitala awash five miles offshore, with one oar and the tiller missing—but no sign of Dave (Webster 1962).
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| Artistic Interpretation of David Kenyon Webster Sailing | BookBrains Press |
The newspapers covered the story with typical brevity. The Progress Bulletin noted that Webster was a 37-year-old technical writer and former Daily News reporter who "failed to return from a fishing trip," leaving behind his wife Barbara, 32, and their three children ("Writer Hunted" 1961). The stark facts barely hinted at the magnitude of the loss.
A Legacy Delayed but Not Denied
Webster's disappearance might have relegated him to a footnote in military history, but his widow ensured his voice would not be silenced. Barbara Webster preserved his wartime memoir manuscript, and with encouragement from historian Stephen Ambrose, Louisiana State University Press published Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich in 1994—over three decades after his death (Hill 2020).
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| Webster, David K. (1994). Parachute Infantry | Available at Amazon |
The memoir revealed Webster's exceptional literary talent, combining vivid combat descriptions with philosophical reflections on war's brutality and meaning. Ironically, Ambrose's own Band of Brothers quoted extensively from the same material that Barbara Webster later published, ensuring that her husband's words reached millions through both the book and the acclaimed HBO miniseries.
Remembering the Man Behind the Mystery
David Kenyon Webster's story embodies both triumph and tragedy. He was a Harvard student who chose service over scholarship, a paratrooper who survived some of World War II's most brutal battles, a journalist who captured stories with precision and passion, and a husband and father who loved his family deeply. His fascination with the sea—that ancient force that both sustains and destroys—ultimately became his undoing.
In her foreword, Barbara Webster wrote that her husband hoped his shark research "would some day be interesting and helpful to scientists and to the fisherman, sailor and swimmer" (Webster 1962). While his disappearance prevented him from seeing that hope fulfilled, his wartime memoir has provided invaluable firsthand testimony about one of history's most significant conflicts.
The waters off Santa Monica have never revealed their secret about David Kenyon Webster's final moments. But through his preserved words and the devotion of those who loved him, this teller of tales continues to speak across the decades—a voice rescued from the depths of potential obscurity to illuminate the courage, passion, and fragility of the human experience.
His story reminds us that some mysteries are more powerful than their solutions, and that a life lived fully—even when cut short—can ripple through time in ways the living never anticipate. David Kenyon Webster sailed into history twice: once as a paratrooper landing in occupied Europe, and once as a writer disappearing into the Pacific swells, leaving behind words that would outlast the waves.
Join the Conversation
What drives a Harvard student to abandon his education and jump out of airplanes into Nazi-occupied Europe?
Have you ever been so passionate about something that others thought you were crazy to pursue it?
What would your spouse or family say about your obsessions if they were writing your story?
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📚 For Further Reading
California. "David Kenyon Webster, 'California, County Marriages, 1849-1957.'" 1952. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K8DY-668?lang=en.
Hill, Elizabeth. "PFC. David Kenyon 'Web' Webster (1922–1961)." FamilySearch, December 13, 2020. https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/L1HY-QLG.
"Hunt Canceled for Writer Lost at Sea." Los Angeles Mirror, September 11, 1961.
Webster, Barbara. "Foreword." In Myth and Maneater: The Story of the Shark, by David Kenyon Webster. London: Peter Davies, 1962.
Webster, David Kenyon. "David Kenyon Webster, Author of 'Parachute Infantry - An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich.'" David Kenyon Webster, 2021. https://www.davidkenyonwebster.com/biography.html.
Webster, David Kenyon. "Letters Home." David Kenyon Webster, 2021. https://www.davidkenyonwebster.com/lettershome.html.
"Writer Hunted After Swamped Boat Found." Progress Bulletin (Pomona, CA), September 11, 1961.
"Writer Missing Off Beach on Fishing Trip." Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1961.
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