Stacey Barchenger

FLORIDA TODAY

His life jacket was absorbing water. His eyes scanning the vast ocean, he saw only a sheen of oil and sailors clinging to debris.

And there were fins.

"All of a sudden you hear a blood-curdling scream, and you look and you see that that kapok jacket goes under, and then like a fish cork that kapok life jacket brings a body back to the surface," Edgar Harrell said. "And then you see fins, fins, fins coming around all that blood."

***

It was July 30, 1945. Harrell, a U.S. Marine, and others aboard the U.S.S. Indianapolis heavy cruiser had days earlier delivered the components of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan that led to the end of World War II to a base in the Mariana Islands.

The hulking Indianapolis — 610-feet long and weighing nearly 10,000 tons — and its crew of about 1,200 were headed to help invade Japan.

Fourteen minutes after midnight, an inferno lit the night sky.

Two Japanese torpedoes hit the ship, tearing through the bow and exploding near a fuel tank and powder magazine. Power and communications were lost. The vessel started to roll starboard.

An order to abandon ship came like an echo, passing from sailor to marine to sailor.

"I made my way to that rail, and looked into the blackness of night and I thought, 'This is the end of life. Life is over,'" Harrell said. He prayed he would get home to his family in southwest Kentucky and a certain brunette who said she would wait for him.

Indianapolis sank in 12 minutes. It took about 300 lives with it.

Three times as many men clung to debris and life jackets, adrift in the Philippine Sea.

"When daybreak came, we had company," Harrell said. "When I say we had company, you could look out any given time and you could see big fins swimming out, not necessarily out at a distance, but swimming around us."

For four days the remaining crew of the Indianapolis huddled in groups and bobbed with every swell. On day one, Harrell was in a group of 80 men. On day two, there were 40. On day three, there were 17.

Some fell to dehydration, salt poisoning after slaking their thirst with sea water, or hallucinations that led them to swim for imagined oases or fight with friends they mistook to be a foe. And there were the sharks.

"I often say it's much easier to die than to live," Harrell told FLORIDA TODAY. "You have to struggle, you have to work to live, but all you have to do in that open sea is give up and allow your head to drop into the water, which many men did."

Harrell said sharks never came for his group and only attacked if a man swam off for a phantom oasis.

The senior medical officer, Capt. Lewis Haynes, only saw one shark, but felt bumps in the dark that led him to wonder, according to a retelling of his story available online, "maybe the sharks were satisfied with the dead; they didn't have to bite the living."

Smithsonian Magazine said the ordeal was considered the worst shark attack in history. Experts said sharks likely preyed on the dead and the living.

A pilot on an antisubmarine patrol spotted the survivors four days after Indianapolis sank. Radio contact between pilots and another destroyer led to the rescue of about 315 men, about a quarter of the original crew. Harrell got out of the Marines in January 1946, and married that brunette waiting back home.

After the Indianapolis sank, the captain, Charles McVay III, was accused of putting the ship and its crew in danger for not zigzagging to avoid enemy fire. The survivors disputed that accusation and in 2000 and 2001, the Navy and federal government exonerated McVay of wrongdoing that caused the deaths.

"But it was too late," Harrell said. McVay committed suicide in 1968.

***

Harrell, 89, lives in Tennessee with Ola, the brunette he married 67 years ago. He is one of 36 survivors still living. Two live in Florida and are in poor health, according to the survivors' organization.

It wasn't until 2005 that Harrell began telling the story of Indianapolis, and now he travels the country speaking. In part, he opened up because of the movie "Jaws," which debuted in 1975.

Harrell delayed seeing the film, fearing it would bring back bad memories of his own shark encounters. He finally watched it 30 years after its release. The movie's shark hunter, Quint, claims to be an Indianapolis survivor and tells the story of the sinking in one scene.

The blockbuster provided the catalyst for Harrell to write his first book, a nonfiction first-hand account, in 2005 (He published a second this year).

Sometimes, when people see Harrell wearing a shirt with "USS Indianapolis" on the breast or embroidered onto his cap, they mention the movie and ask Harrell what happened.

"Oh, you actually are one of the survivors of the Indianapolis?" he recalled a frequent conversation.

"I say yes. I can tell the story from experience. The movie 'Jaws,' that man, he does a wonderful job, but he was not there. I was."

Contact Barchenger at 321-242-3669 or sbarchenger@floridatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter @sbarchenger.