Hunter Scott
‘One thousand two hundred and sixty-nine crewmen in time of war,’ muttered Hunter.
He was amazed. He never knew that warships had that kind of capacity. He thought so many men would end up getting in each other’s way. He found it difficult to imagine sailing with so many soldiers could be effective. The library exhaled the thick scent of worm-eaten wood and ancient history. It had taken him a while to locate the enormous, hard-backed book on famous ships he held in front of him. He had had to seek help from the librarian, a mousy man who wore his glasses on the edge of his nose and always talked in a low voice. He guided Hunter along several corridors before they reached a shelf on which various technical and historical works on planes, trains and other means of transport had been classified in alphabetical order. The book Ships That Made History was just what Hunter had been looking for. Apart from describing in detail the features of luxury liners from the early twentieth century, like the Titanic, the Olympic and other prominent names belonging to the British shipping company White Star, it had a whole appendix devoted to warships. There was an entire chapter on the USS Indianapolis, with a full-page plan, several colour illustrations and a complete description of its armament, equipment and measures. Everything the boy needed to know was in those pages.
He quickly made progress with his reading, in the yellow light of a desk lamp. Equipped with nineteen cannons and eight anti-aircraft guns, with a length of more than 180 metres, the Indianapolis fitted the category of heavy cruisers that made up the United States Fifth Fleet. The photographs left no room for doubt: this had been an imposing ship. But there was something that caught his attention. The American military authorities had chosen the Indianapolis for a mission of momentous importance in world history: the transport of the uranium and delicate parts needed to arm the atomic bombs that would be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki three weeks later. Even though it was a large ship, the Indy wasn’t the fastest or most heavily armed. To make matters worse, it had an important technical defect: its centre of gravity was too high, and its crew lacked sufficient experience. So why had the Indianapolis been chosen for such a crucial mission? Hunter started thinking it had all been a product of chance: the boat had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
