In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors

On a windswept fall day, on a gray morning after the colorful agony of autumn had passed but before the deep, blank snows of winter sealed off the world, Captain Charles Butler McVay III, the former commander of the World War II cruiser USS
Indianapolis,
woke and took stock of his day. He was alone in a drafty bedroom of a colonial house called Winvian Farm, outside Litchfield, Connecticut, adrift in rich horse country. His window looked out at a flagstone terrace built for grand cocktail parties and at a swimming pool; beyond that, he could glimpse the scattered homes of bankers and lawyers whose offices were in New York, 100 miles to the south. The surrounding woods, black and skeletal in the morning light, scratched at a gray sky.

There was much to do. Earlier in the week, the captain had drained the pool for the winter, and this morning he would finish the ritual of closure by putting up snow fences and wrapping the property’s hedges with burlap. After lunch, he often played bridge; later in the afternoon, he might putter in his woodshop or go duck hunting on Bantam Lake. The captain was seventy years old, in fine health, with white hair and black eyebrows that framed piercing, but gentle, blue eyes. Always dapper, always self-assured, he dressed in crisply pressed khaki shirt and pants and leather slippers, clothes that had become a uniform for him, a vestige of his life in the wartime navy.

“Vivian!”

His wife’s room was across from his own spartan billet, which included just a twin bed and a night table with a Bible that he read every night before turning in at ten. In the
room was a desk drawer filled with letters from the families of sailors he’d commanded, bound up in string and rubber bands. The letters troubled the captain; they had always troubled him. Each Christmas even more arrived, and December 25 was fast approaching.

There was no answer from Vivian’s room, which wasn’t surprising. Vivian was his third wife. Vivacious, beautiful, and tempestuous, she was in the habit of sleeping late. A former fashion model, she sat at the center of the social whirl of Litchfield; by all appearances, she and Charlie—as all his friends called him—made a wonderful pair, a handsome couple. The social events often bored McVay, who could be shy and even recalcitrant, at times preferring the solitude of the duck blind to the patter of a cocktail party.

He made his way down the creaking staircase to the kitchen, where, lately, he’d been spending more and more time talking with the housekeeper, Florence Regosia, a kind-hearted young woman who’d worked for him for eight years and who insisted on calling him Admiral. He’d actually been promoted to the rank of rear admiral, his official naval title upon his retirement, what’s called a “tombstone promotion.” Such promotions, though, are a bit like being named captain of the football team and then sitting out the game. McVay himself usually insisted on Captain; it seemed more honest to him.

After exchanging pleasantries with Florence, he took his black Lab, Chance, for a walk in the woods behind the house. Afterward, he met Al Dudley, his gardener and handyman, and they began work on the shrubs in the front yard, binding them mummy-tight with twine and burlap for the long voyage into winter.

From the yard of Winvian Farm, you can look out at the country road leading north into Litchfield, and south toward the main arteries leading to the sea. There’s a stone fence, a bank of apple trees, and beyond that some woods and fields galloping into the distance. Many of the houses in Litchfield
were built by nineteenth-century sea captains, and many of them still sport widow’s walks. It’s a hilly landscape, and the village is sunk in a wooded valley, off a main thoroughfare, as if the wives of these captains had wanted to drag them as far inland as possible, away from the sea, out of danger’s way. It’s a place people usually come to in peace and prosperity at the end of life; it’s a place to come to and forget things. The captain had lived here for nearly seven years.

A barn and machine shed and the cold whisper of the November wind surrounded McVay and his gardener. They worked well together, side by side, McVay chatting, pliers and twine in hand, as if nothing at all was bothering him.

But something was.

After a couple of hours, they broke for lunch, and Al Dudley returned to his own smaller house across the county road. Inside the Winvian farmhouse, Florence was setting out lunch—a sandwich—on the dining room table. Vivian was off somewhere in another room, eating alone. Before sitting down, the captain went upstairs to his bedroom, ostensibly to change into something suitable for an afternoon of playing bridge at the Sanctum, a gentleman’s club situated on the trim town green in Litchfield. He closed the door.

Beyond the bedroom windows, the wind was stripping what leaves were left on the trees, and a freezing rain was worming its way under the eaves, looking for a way in.

On the night table sat a holster, and in the holster was a navy-issue .38, a revolver, which the captain picked up.

A knock came at the door.

“Admiral, your lunch is ready.” It was Florence.

“I’ll be down in a minute.”

For all the captain’s customary good cheer, Florence had been worried about him. She knew he was having nightmares; he’d told her they were filled with circling sharks. When she’d reminded him, several weeks earlier, that the storm windows also needed installing, he had remarked,
“Oh, that won’t be necessary.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” the captain told her, “I won’t be here.”

Now, Florence returned downstairs, and soon the captain appeared in the doorway, a blank look on his face. He was still dressed in his khaki.

“Admiral,” Florence said, “you have to go play cards today.”

“Oh, yes,” said McVay. “I know.”

When Florence asked if he’d like some lunch, he replied, “I’ll eat it later.”

Florence eyed him, and then she returned to the kitchen.

The captain pushed open the front door and stepped through a small wooden entryway erected in anticipation of the coming winter snow. He lay down on the stone walk with his head resting on the marble step, his gaunt face tilted up at a gray sky.

Beside him, as he lay alone in the front yard, stood Chance, who watched, head cocked to one side, as the captain brought the cold barrel of the gun to his head.

In McVay’s left hand was a set of house keys, and on the key ring, a metal toy sailor, a worn memento from happier times. He’d carried it with him around the world, across several oceans, and into battle. He’d been given the toy sailor as a gift when he was a boy.

Whatever good fortune the captain had enjoyed in his life, it had run out. He pulled the trigger.

A pool of blood sluiced over the step and ran into the matted grass. Reclined as he was, with his head resting upon the step, his hands lying carefully in his lap, his legs stretching easily before him and pointing down the stone walk, Charles Butler McVay looked like a man adrift, cut free—a
peaceful voyager now, on a steady sea.

When word of McVay’s death began trickling to the outside world, his obituary, carried by major newspapers, described a historic naval career—“Adm. Charles McVay Dies at 70,” read the
Washington Post.
Both the
Post
and the
New York Times
noted, however, that his career had been touched by intense controversy and disaster.

Few people in Litchfield understood why he had killed himself; little was known of his life before he moved to the tiny, insular community. By turns private and gregarious, modest yet proud, he was an enigma, a mysteriously stoic man.

What few in his adopted town knew was that Captain McVay was a survivor of the worst naval disaster at sea in U.S. history. This is a dubious distinction, to be sure—one that dogged him throughout his life. He rarely discussed with anyone the nightmarish events of the early morning of July 30, 1945, when his ship, the USS
Indianapolis,
was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, immediately killing nearly 300 men, and sending as many as 900 others into the black, churning embrace of the vast Philippine Sea, some 350 miles from nearest landfall.

Four days later, when the navy finally learned of the sinking, only 321 of these sailors were still among the living; four of the survivors died shortly after their rescue in military hospitals in the South Pacific. In a story rich with ironies, it turned out that the
Indianapolis
was the first ship the Japanese captain had ever torpedoed and the last major warship sunk during World War II.

In the aftermath of the disaster, two unprecedented events occurred: the navy changed the way it did business at sea, and Captain McVay was charged with negligence in his
command and brought to trial. Of the nearly 400 American captains whose ships went down during World War II—indeed, of all the captains in the entire history of the navy—he is the only captain to have been court-martialed whose ship was sunk by an act of war.

In the early 1990s, intelligence reports that might have proved McVay’s innocence in the matter were finally declassified. Upon review, however, the navy refused to reconsider its decision. In spite of congressional action passed in October 2000, McVay’s court martial conviction still stands today, and his criminal record lists him as a felon.

Of the original 317 men who survived the ordeal, 124 are still living as of this writing, and every two years they meet in Indianapolis, the namesake city of their doomed ship, to revisit the sinking and the memory of Captain McVay. They are the gray-haired men in windbreakers and tennis shoes you see walking in malls in the morning; they are retired ministers, truck drivers, doctors, and wealthy businessmen; they are grandfathers, husbands, uncles, and brothers. And to a man they insist Captain McVay was not responsible for the calamitous event that utterly changed them. When the nightmare was over—when they were able to stand again and walk away into the rest of their lives—they rarely spoke of what had happened. It took years to unlock the memories of those days and nights.

In many history books, the sinking of the
Indianapolis
isn’t mentioned; in some ways, it’s as if the ship set sail and has never come home. But to this day, the disaster haunts the Department of the Navy, and it haunts these men. At night, some of them still reach out from sleep to grip a bed they are sure is sinking beneath them.

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