Captain Quint's blood chilling account of
the survivor's struggle after the USS Indianapolis sinking from the
movie "Jaws" Written by Peter Benchley and
Carl Gottlieb
Aboard Captain
Quint's boat "Orca":
Scientist Matt Hooper: (Richard
Dreyfus) You were on the Indianapolis? Police Chief Martin Brody:
(Roy Scheider) What happened? Captain Quint: (Robert
Shaw) Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side,
chief. It was comin' back, from the island of Tinian to Leyte, just
delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into
the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark
for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. You know, you know
that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin' from the
dorsal to the tail. Well, we didn't know, 'cause our bomb mission had
been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh-huh. They didn't
even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks
come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it's
... kinda like 'ol squares in a battle like a, you see on a calendar,
like the Battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark would go for
nearest man and then he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin'
and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away.
Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes.
You know the thing about a shark, he's got...lifeless eyes, black eyes,
like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'.
Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah
then you hear that terrible high-pitch screamin' and the ocean turns
red and in spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in
and rip you to pieces. Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost 100
men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe 1,000. I don't know how many
men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped
into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player,
bo'sun's mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up.
Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well
... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr.
Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He's
a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come
in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to
pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin'
for my turn. I'll never put on a life jacket again. So, 1,100 men went
in the water, 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29,
1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
