In the deep annals of Hollywood filmmaking, you’d be hard-pressed to find a monologue more powerful — both in its writing and execution — than “The Indianapolis Speech” given by the late great British actor Robert Shaw as Quint in Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Jaws.

Goodness gracious, read the words, and then watch Shaw nail it in the clip that follows. It’s hair-raisingly spellbinding. And it all begins with Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss’ character) asking the simple question, “You were on the Indianapolis?” …

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin’ back, from the island of Tinian to Laytee, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half an hour. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water, chief? You tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know … was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin’. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it’s … kinda like ‘ol squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he’d start poundin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’ and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he’s got … lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin’ and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’ they call come in and rip you to pieces. Y’know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don’t know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin’ chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well … he’d been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He’s a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

Brilliant, eh? According to Spielberg and others associated with the picture, the speech was actually written not by the credited screenwriters — Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb — but by a trio of contributors: uncredited writer Howard Sackler, famous director John Milius (who was a good friend of Spielberg’s) and Robert Shaw himself.

What’s even more incredible about the address is that it was pretty much straight out of a history book.

Yes, the USS Indianapolis was a real United States Navy Portland-class cruiser that did indeed deliver “the most crucial parts of the atomic bomb” that was eventually dropped on Hiroshima. And, as it was returning back was hit by two torpedoes from a Japanese sub. The numbers that Quint cites as to how many sailors ended up in the water, were killed by sharks, survived in the end, and the date of the sinking were a little off, however. According to what historians know, 1,196 sailors were on board at the time of the attack, but only 900 made it into the water.

The Indianapolis did sink in just 12 minutes, but not on June 29, rather, on June 30.

It’s estimated that somewhere between a few dozen to 150 sailors were killed by sharks (scientists speculate most of the sharp-finned, man-eaters were ocean whitetip sharks, with the possibility that some of them were tiger sharks, too).

To this day, it’s recognized as the largest shark attack ever known to humankind.

If you’d like to fall down the rabbit hole even further on the subject, then you’ll do fine with the following YouTube playlist, which includes interviews of the actual veterans who survived the tragic incident (and snippets from a piece Discovery did on the story for “Shark Week” titled “Ocean of Fear”):