One short scream, and John was under the waves.
From their vantage point on the raft, four survivors watch in horror as tiger sharks
rip their friend apart.
The sharks are in a feeding frenzy, and begin to eat John while he's still alive and struggling
to surface for air.
Five days earlier the skies are clear and the sea is calm.
It's perfect weather for sailing, and Deborah Scaling Kiley, her friends Brand Cavanagh
and Mark Adams, and Captain John Lippoth along with his girlfriend Meg Mooney are all enjoying
cutting through the low waves aboard the Trashman, an 18 meter luxury yacht decked out with all
the luxuries of 1982.
The five have been hired by a billionaire to sail his yacht from Maine to its new owner
down in Florida, and the experienced sailors are making great time.
It's a total cake job, the weather is wonderful, and the yacht is pretty plush.
Plus, she's a speed demon, and zips through the waves like a hot knife through butter.
The Trashman is worth every dollar spent on her, and Deborah can't believe she's actually
being paid to basically take a pleasure cruise down to sunny Florida with some of her closest
friends.
The group is having a blast and thoroughly enjoying their adventure, sailing through
the first night and into yet another perfect sunrise.
But later in the day, clouds start brewing.
At first, the group thinks it'll just be another late season storm- some wind, some showers.
Rough seas, but nothing of any real concern.
Plus, the crew is made up of veteran sailors, trained and experienced in handling stormy
seas.
The calm waves begin to grow as rain pours down and winds gust.
Normally six to eight feet, the waves are now peaking at twenty feet.
The Trashman handles them no problem, though the big dips and crests throw the crew around
some.
Meg Mooney accidentally slashes her leg on some rigging, the cut is not life threatening,
but it is deep and large.
She struggles to bandage it as best she can as the waves only continue to grow in intensity.
She has no idea that cutting her leg open has just doomed her friends to a horrible
fate.
The boat struggles through what is now becoming a full-blown tropical storm, and as night
falls the waves are reaching a whopping 40 to 50 feet.
The Trashman struggles through the gale force winds and massive waves, but she's taking
on water.
The bailing pumps are working over time, but it's an obviously losing battle.
The small yacht is being swamped.
Then, as another massive wave breaks over the ship, it's too late- the Trashman has
taken on too much water, and is starting to slip beneath the waves.
There's no time to grab supplies- going below decks is a death sentence.
Instead, the crew hurries to free an 11 foot zodiac raft from the sinking yacht.
It's their only chance to survive, and they desperately tug at the ropes holding it in
place even as the ship begins to drag it under.
With a final, desperate tug, the raft pops free- and just in time.
All five crew members tread water and watch as the lights on the sinking Trashman blink
off, the yacht sinking to the bottom.
But in that brief flicker of light, Deborah thinks she sees something.
It's shaped like a torpedo, a large fish of some sort?
Meg is running on pure adrenaline as she struggles to get onto the raft.
Her leg is bleeding profusely, the stress of trying to get off the sinking ship having
torn free the bandage she had wrapped around the wound.
For several minutes Meg's leg has been bleeding freely into the Atlantic ocean, and something
has noticed it.
The crew have to fight the massive waves to pull themselves up onto the raft.
As he kicks against the water to lift himself up, Mark feels something hit his leg with
considerable force.
He calls out in surprise, and Deborah leans over to look at the water below Mark, her
face draining white in panic.
There, just a few feet below Mark is that familiar torpedo-shaped body, and beyond it,
more like it.
Dozens of them.
Sharks.
tiger sharks to be exact, the most dangerous shark in the ocean.
Known as the garbage cans of the sea, tiger sharks eat anything they come across.
Incredibly aggressive, tiger sharks will even kill and eat prey just to deny it to another
shark, and they are known to swarm the location of wounded prey, and even attack each other
while in the midst of a mindless feeding frenzy- mortally wounded tiger sharks have been documented
still eating prey.
And now the sound of the sinking ship and the smell of Meg's blood in the water has
drawn two dozen tiger sharks to the raft's location.
The sharks are anxious, and as the crew fight the waves, the blood-crazed sharks begin to
ram into the raft, trying to knock it over and force someone overboard.
Over and over again the sharks attack the zodiac, smashing into it at high speed, driven
into a frenzy by Meg's bleeding wound.
Luckily for the shipwrecked five, the storm eventually blows itself out, as do the sharks,
and as dawn comes the sea is calm once again.
But as Deborah and her friends look out across the waves, they see dozens of fins cutting
through the water.
The sharks are still here.
And to make matters worse, there's no sign of land or of another ship.
They've been blown into the gulf stream off the coast of North Carolina, into a lane of
ocean rarely frequented by normal shipping.
They didn't even get a chance to radio off a mayday before the ship sank, and there's
no rescue beacon technology in the early 1980s.
In fact, the group of five has absolutely nothing with them but the clothes on their
backs.
No food.
No water.
An ocean full of sharks.
And nobody knows the Trashman has sunk.
The group tries to keep each other's spirits up.
They know they're off the coast of North Carolina somewhere, and the east coast of the United
States is one of the busiest stretches of ocean in the world.
It's only a matter of time before somebody spots them, be it a merchant vessel or even
a US Navy ship.
They feel relieved at first, but Meg isn't doing very well.
She's lost a lot of blood, but even worse, it's clear her wound is becoming infected.
Even now it's turning purplish and bruising.
And the sight of fins in the water is an ever-constant reminder of what lurks just past a few inches
of hard rubber raft.
Dawn of the second day stranded at sea.
Dehydration is starting to take a serious toll on the crew.
There's no cover from the sun above their heads, and now Deboarh and her friends are
wishing for a new storm.
At least then there'd be cloud cover to shield them from the brutal sun's rays, and even
better- sweet, sweet rain water to drink.
The five are growing weak and hungry, but the dehydration is getting the worst of them.
Meg's wound is definitely infected, and she's growing very sick.
There's nothing that they can do for her though, there's no food, no water, no medical supplies-
nothing but their rubber raft and the vast open ocean all around them.
Also, the sharks.
Incredibly, though their numbers have dwindled somewhat, the tiger sharks have stuck with
the raft.
That's probably because the water the crew bail out of the bottom of their raft is full
of Meg's blood and now pus.
They're basically chumming the waters around them, but they have no other option- if they
don't continuously bail water this raft will sink just like the Trashman.
By dawn of their third day stranded out at sea, Mark and John can't take it anymore.
Dehydration has impaired their judgment, and even as Deborah and Brad pull at them and
scream for them to stop, Mark and John lean over the edge of the raft and begin gulping
down briny sea water.
This is a fatal mistake, the salt-laden sea water may have cured their thirst temporarily,
but the ingestion of so much sodium forces their kidneys to work overtime in a bid to
expel the lethal salt.
Mark and John are actually urinating out more water than they're taking in, exponentially
accelerating their dehydration.
It only takes hours for the hallucinations to begin.
John shouts out in happy surprise when he spots land on the horizon- but there's only
one problem: it's a dehydration-inspired hallucination.
Brad and Deborah try to talk John down, telling him he's hallucinating and there's nothing
out there, but he only grows agitated at the two.
Finally, he decides that his only chance is to swim for the safety of the phantom shore
only he can see.
Weak and severely dehydrated themselves, there's nothing Deborah and Brad can do as John jumps
into the water.
The sharks have been waiting.
They're on him in seconds.
One tiger strikes him in the leg, sinking its teeth deep into his flesh.
John screams- and then goes quiet as a second tiger strikes and drags him under the waves.
John does not surface again, the tigers are feeding with such ferocity that they keep
his body under.
Deborah turns away in horror, she's too shellshocked and dehydrated to cry.
The only sound is the vigorous splashing of sharks as they snatch up any stray bits of
John floating about.
They'll eat again real soon.
A few hours later, Mark begins acting peculiar.
He's clearly unaware of his surroundings.
It's as if he doesn't even realize he's on a raft in the middle of the ocean.
In fact, he clearly thinks he's back home, and he needs to make a run to the store.
Just like that, Mark stands up, takes a step, and falls right off the side of the boat.
Bam!
The force of the attack slams Mark's body onto the bottom of the raft.
Then, another massive blow from below as yet another shark tears into Mark.
The raft is pummeled by sharks as big as the raft itself, as the feeding frenzy goes into
overdrive just inches underneath Deborah and Brad.
Mark is gone.
But the sharks aren't.
Despite having eaten two of their friends, the sharks continue to circle the raft, occasionally
nudging it as if testing to see if it might sink soon.
Deborah and Brad continue to bail water through the rest of the horrible day, Meg far too
sick to do anything.
She's hardly conscious anymore.
The infection has begun to turn her leg black, as it aggressively spreads through her blood
stream.
The bottom of the raft is filled with a mixture of urine, blood, and pus, and Meg is now catatonic
and unresponsive.
As night falls, Deborah and Brad try and get what sleep they can, careful to maintain a
grip so a wave doesn't pitch them over the side and into the jaws of the hungry Tigers
below them.
A few hours later, the two wake up from their fitful sleep.
It's still dark, but under the moonlight it's become clear- Meg is dead.
The infection has spread through her body and shut down her organs.
The only question is what to do with her.
The two are starving, and both are intimately familiar with the stories of sailors committing
cannibalism in order to survive.
It's a bonafide taboo of the worst kind, but a stranded sailor lost out at sea is always
forgiven for committing what to many is the most horrific act imaginable- eating human
flesh.
Brad begins to consider how best to begin to eat Meg, but Deborah warns him- Meg is
too infected to eat.
Her body is still boiling with an out of control infection that's now consuming it from the
inside out.
Despite their starvation, eating Meg could prove fatal.
But they can't keep the body in the raft with them, the filthy water they have to continuously
bail is filled with her bodily fluids and the smallest nick could see them infected
as well.
There's just one thing to do.
The two remove Meg's jewelry and her shirt, hoping to give it to a family member should
they survive this ordeal.
Then, with grim determination, they move the naked body onto the side of the raft and prepare
to push it over.
Despite intense dehydration and near-delirium though, the two stop- it doesn't feel right
to just dump Meg over without saying something.
So Deborah improvises, and she recites the Lord's Prayer and Psalm 23.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies, thou anointest my head with
oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell
in the house of the Lord for ever.
And with a splash, they push Meg's body overboard.
The sharks were waiting.
Physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, the two simply roll back over the edge of
the raft and settle into the murky bottom.
They close their eyes and drift off to sleep as the sharks devour their dead friend.
Dawn breaks on the fifth day.
Brad and Deborah are close to death and they know it.
Their bodies are covered in staph infections, their minds on the edge of full-blown delirium
even as their organs begin to shut down.
And the sharks are still there.
Then, suddenly, there's something on the horizon- a ship!
Brad wipes his eyes and looks again, then blinks and looks a third time.
He can't believe it, but it's real, and even more incredibly the distant ship seems to
be sailing straight for them!
The two leap up to their feet and begin yelling as loud as they can and waving their arms
around.
Miraculously, a deckhand spots them and begins waving back.
A Soviet cargo vessel rescues the two hundreds of miles from the American coast.
The ship's medic immediately begins to treat their serious infections as the crew brings
them water and food to eat.
A few days later, the two will be back in the US where they'll be hospitalized as they
recover from their ordeal, but the haunting memory of sharks eating their friends alive
will be with them until the day they die.
Now watch I was lost at sea for 76 days with sharks circling, or click this other video
instead!