Back at Sea
By Don Campbell

PHILIPPINE SEA, Aug. 11 — We're aboard the M/V Sea Eagle, skirting a tropical storm after sailing out of Guam to search for the USS Indianapolis, the last American warship lost in World War II.

The storm is pushing us south of our target. But if all goes well, by sometime this weekend the Sea Eagle could be in the vicinity of where the Indianapolis vanished 55 years ago.

There are few similarities between the 610-foot-long World War II heavy cruiser and the 186-foot-long work boat that we're using to find her. Sea Eagle is basically an oceangoing tug, built for hauling containers and barges slowly around the islands, not for racing heavy guns to a naval engagement or a desperate invasion beachhead.

When Indy shipped out to the Pacific theater for the last time, she carried high-tech, secret cargo: a lead bucket of enriched uranium and a wooden crate holding the firing mechanism for the most deadly weapon ever used in war, the Hiroshima atom bomb.

The Sea Eagle's most sophisticated cargo revolves around a pair of watertight freight containers packed with electronic equipment and repair gear and connected by a fat snake of cables to a 10-foot-tall, high-speed hydraulic winch. Wrapped around the 6-foot diameter winch drum is 22,000 feet of steel-reinforced cable. And at the end of the line, firmly lashed down beneath the block and pulley of a telescoping crane, sits the Remora-6000.

The Remora is a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV: an unmanned deep-water submersible designed to explore the ocean floor four miles below the surface.

Think of Remora as a man-made crab, about 5 feet tall, 6 feet long and 3 feet wide: On top, sits a squat, orange block of high-density syntatic foam, Remora's ''shell" of deep-water ballast. Below the shell hang the vehicle's sonar, lights and video cameras to see through the inky depths; six small, ducted thrusters to navigate around treacherous wrecks or oil rigs; sturdy manipulator arms that can grasp, cut, wrench or drill; and a welter of sophisticated electronics to communicate with human handlers on the surface miles above.

If all goes well and expedition leader Curt Newport is correct about what he's identified at the bottom of the Philippine Sea, Remora will enable the passengers and crew of Sea Eagle to establish visual contact with USS Indianapolis.

But the ROV is not the only connection to Indy onboard. The ships share the presence of four men, four survivors of Indianapolis's last cruise.

Woody James, Mike Kuryla, Paul Murphy and L.D. Cox are in their 70s now, but willing to weather a wicked storm for the chance to see the Indianapolis once again.

"I've been dreaming of this moment a long time," says Woody.

"Let's hope it's not a dream," adds Paul.

"People forget the level of sacrifice the last generation made to preserve American ideals," says Newport. "The men of Indianapolis went through hell to survive the war, even before their ship went down. How can we value our freedom, if we don't really know what it cost? What we have today, we have because of men like these."

For the four veterans, this expedition offers a practically unimagined chance to pay respects to friends and crew mates and a ship they last saw more than half a century ago. Of the 1,196 men aboard the Indianapolis when it was torpedoed, only 316 were alive five days later. Fewer than half of those survivors are living today.

"Someone asked me if Indy had a soul," Mike Kuryla reflects, "When I remember hearing her creaking, just an unearthly sound, as she went stern up, I think maybe she did, maybe that was the sound of a dying ship's soul."

Whitecaps dotted the waves even as we sailed from Guam's sheltered waters. Out on the ocean, the seas are much worse. Waves surge over the bow and flood the fantail. All but the most essential crew stumble for their cabins and the comfort of their berths.

The survivors may be aging and the weather punishing, but they've lived through far worse.

"A once-in-a-lifetime adventure," declares Woody James before the sea gets the best of him, sending him to his bunk.

"I'd swim halfway there if I had to," says L.D. Cox. Fortunately, he won't have to. But the trip to the search site promises to be interesting.

 Video: At a ceremony two weeks ago marking the 55th anniversary of the Indianapolis's sinking, Sheila Dillon reads a letter sent to her grandparents by Captain Charles B. McVay after their son, Thomas Leon Barksdale, died in the torpedo attack.