Phrase, Fable, and Allusion

Indianapolis

name of an American heavy cruiser which in 1945 was torpedoed in Japanese waters and sank; of 1,196 men aboard, only 316 survived, many of them dying by dehydration or shark attack through the ensuing five days before they were rescued. The Indianapolis involved the greatest loss of life in American naval history, and became an enduring legend; in the film Jaws (1975) the shark-hunter Quint explains his hatred of sharks as deriving from the hours he spent in the water after the Indianapolis sank watching his friends being killed.

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