JAWS 1975 1 Hour and 29 Minutes into Movie:

Captin Sam Quint: Mr. Hooper, that’s the U.S.S. Indianapolis.
Dr. Hooper: You were on the Indianapolis?
Chief Martin Brody: What happened?
Captin Sam Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief.

It was comin’ back, from the island of Tinian Delady, just delivered the bomb.

The Hiroshima bomb.

Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in
twelve 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 battle like a, you see on a calendar, like
the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark 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 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 a hundred
men! I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! 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, bosom’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’d 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 lifejacket again.

So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men
come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945.

Anyway, we delivered “the bomb.”

Author Bios

Write Me Something Beautiful Authors - Casey and Jimmy Gauntt

Casey Gauntt

is a retired attorney and former senior executive of a major San Diego real estate company. He lives in Solana Beach, California, with his wife, Hilary. Casey grew up in Itasca, Illinois, graduated Lake Park High School in 1968, and received B.S., JD and MBA degrees from the University of Southern California.

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Jimmy Gauntt

was born and raised in Solana Beach and graduated from Torrey Pines High School in 2002.   A prestigious Trustee Scholar at the University of Southern California, he majored in English and Spanish. He authored six plays, five screenplays, and a multitude of poems and short stories. Beginning in 2010, the USC English Department annually bestows the Jimmy Gauntt Memorial Award—aka “The Jimmy”—to the top graduates in English.  Jimmy passed over to the other side in 2008 at age 24.

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