For the past few months we’ve strayed from our objective of collecting sea stories. Diving into maritime history is important, and we’ll continue to do that, though for this episode, we’ve reeled it back to the basics. Here we’ll examine one of the best sea stories in modern day cinema. We all know the movie Jaws! And within that movie, we know the epic saga of the fisherman, Quint (Robert Shaw), when he tells the Sheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) and the Marine Biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), the tragedy of the USS Indianapolis during World War II and his personal experience with that. This six minute scene is a most perfect example of the sea story. It is (a) a theatrical retelling of an event, both to fellow shipmates and to a wider audience (the movie goer), and it is (b) within a moment of boredom and complacency while underway on a mission that may not be real or obtainable, (c) it is in a moment of shipmates comparing war stories and scars, and (d) the story itself recalls a surreal event, maybe embellishing, and it skews the facts. Take a watch below (credit to Jaws. Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg. New York City 1974)
It all starts during the mission, underway, to catch the shark. It takes time. Staring into the distant swells. Startled by false action. It turns to drinking. Then to the characters going through their scars, sharing war stories. Two characters in it deep – going back and forth, getting more and more excited about their scars and accompanying stories. The broken heart story. The tattoo. The mother comment. The reluctance to share the past. The pressure to spill the beans. The third character, on the side line listening with amazement and pure concentration. This is the classic effervescent yarn spinning at its finest, even within the context of film. It comes to a climax when Quint shows his shark bite on his leg, and lets out the horror story that happened when the USS Indianapolis is torpedoed. I applause Spielberg for his ability to capture the essence of a sea story. And now, I quickly move into the story of the USS Indianapolis for what we know about it now – through the many books written on the subject. Through the many eye witness testimonies. And through the declassified lens of the Department of Defense.
Quint says the USS Indianapolis delivered the Bomb which was eventually dropped on Hiroshima. This is true. The Indianapolis had been hit by kamikazes months earlier in the pre-invasion bombardment of Okinawa, and was sent back to Mare Island (San Francisco Bay) for repairs and much needed crew training. Before repairs were 100% complete and before the crews received their much needed training, the Indianapolis’ Captain Charles B. McVay III was given orders to depart for Hunter’s Point Naval Base (25 miles from Mare Island, South San Francisco) to pick up a package. Only two men aboard knew the contents of that package. The Indianapolis then departed by herself to her destination in the Pacific – Tinian Island. After leaving there, the Indianapolis set sail for Guam, and then the Philippines, and Quint gets the story wrong. The fleet and the district commanders of the area new Indianapolis was underway. When she left Guam for the Philippines she was under orders to go complete the training that McVay had asked for back in San Francisco. The reason no one came to look for the Indianapolis was a multiple way communication drop.
Captain McVay (above)
The Japanese Submarine had been reported on the route of the USS Indianapolis by a previous US Warship though it was never reported to the Indianapolis – this was the first major fuck up. As the Indianapolis left the area under the command of Guam’s district and entered the district of the Philippines, the charts and asset boards were not updated. The new district that the Indianapolis was reporting to never acknowledged the Indianapolis. The was fuck up number two. Because the USS Indianapolis was reporting to training, it was to report directly to the training command, and not district command. The earlier miscommunication only led to the confusion of this issue. The training command only assumed that the Indianapolis had been rerouted – they never followed up on the missing vessel.
A mayday call did go out. It was the Captain’s first orders after the torpedo hit. It was also the sole concern of the captain and radio men as the Indianapolis sunk. This call was received by a Coast Guard Cutter, but was muffled due to distance and to damage to the Indianapolis’ transmitters.
Quint states that the Indianapolis sunk in 12 minutes, which is more or less accurate. In the Pacific heat, many personnel were sleeping naked on deck. The attack happened in moon light. The engine rooms never received orders to stop the engines, which meant the ship continued at a speed of about 10knts for 12 minutes. This meant that the Indianapolis’ crew was spread out over the course of 2 miles in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The damage control personnel were also trained to dump fuel and bilges in the event of major flooding (this left a deadly sheen of toxins on the water for the men to swim in, though it also eventually made them easier to spot from the sky).
As the bridge and Captain received reports of the damage, they effectively ordered the Abandon Ship. Quint said 1100 men went into the water on the night of July 30, 1945. The number was more like 800 living men, the rest being dead or trapped aboard the sinking ship. Over the course of 2 miles, most of these men would form small groups or drifted isolated, alone. Supplies, life rafts and vest, water and food storage was almost non existent. For days after entering the water, the living crew salvaged everything that floated.
Meanwhile, back on shore, a Japanese radio transmission was intercepted that a sub was claiming it sunk a ship – it was dismissed as a hoax. A SOS transmission was dismissed as a Japanese Hoax. The missing Indianapolis was written off as a miscommunication or a non-issue. The officers responsible for these mistakes would never bare the consequences, and never acknowledge their wrong doings.
In the water for fives days, a majority of the death was from shark attack. Quint summarizes what eye witness accounts report pretty well. One thing Quint does not note is that many of the crew forced bloody members away from the groups and life rafts, because they thought blood would attack sharks. Likewise, and man being attacked, would not be allowed on the raft, because it was thought his blood would trigger more attacks. This meant that if a man was attacked by a shark, he could also be expected to be attacked by his shipmates. There are multiple recordings of this.
After days in the water, with no water, many men drank from the sea. This would cause shock, and insanity. Crew members acting insane were often murdered by other shipmates, in a strange Salem like judicial system. The cruelty between shipmates during these few days was well documented, though poorly passed on in story. It is perhaps, a difficult reality for the survivors to remember. And we can see this in the amount of suicides that took place after the rescue.
On August 2, 1945, 316 men were rescued from the water, by a number of ships and planes. Of the survivors, dozens died from suicide, including the captain, who was erroneously charged with negligence, for not zigzagging his ship. Many books are written about the trials of Captain McVay after the war. Interviews have been done with the Captain of the sub which sank the Indianapolis. Crew who worked on the bridge. And complete investigations have been done exonerating the captain. Though he Navy still has not removed their guilty verdict and they still have not acknowledged the blame lays elsewhere.
