Left for Dead

Hunter Scott’s campaign to bring justice to Captain McVay is the central tenet of this true story. The miscarriage of justice which occurred in McVay’s court-martial is first alluded to when Hunter and his father find so little information on the circumstances around the sinking of the ship at their local library. This lack of information seems immediately unusual for America’s greatest naval disaster and foreshadows the ways that many vital parts of the case were intentionally suppressed by the US navy.

Later, Hunter hears Maurice Bell’s anger at his captain’s treatment at the hands of the US navy and government. Bell’s sentiment is echoed unanimously in the questionnaires which Hunter distributed to survivors: “most [responses] were strongly worded in outrage and anger over the court-martial and conviction of their captain” (169). Hunter’s dedicated campaign to collect information and evidence leads him to discover the US navy’s cover-ups, not only of critical intelligence at the time of the sinking, but also of ignored SOS messages sent by the Indianapolis as it sank into the shark-infested waters. Hunter helped to expose the fact that the navy was more interested in finding a convenient scapegoat than it was in examining systemic flaws in naval operations.