Original subtitles

NARRATOR: It's called "the Rock"...

Welcome to Alcatraz.

NARRATOR: A steel and concrete hell

for the worst of the worst.

GEORGE: There were dangerous men.

And you had to be alert at all times.

NARRATOR: But the waters outside may be even more dangerous.

Guards warned inmates of sharks

cruising for fugitive prey.

WOMAN: Oh!

NARRATOR: And a new sighting just off the prison island

could reveal there's truth behind the tales.

SCOTT: That one big bite changed everything we know

about great white sharks and the science of San Francisco Bay.

NARRATOR: What did prisoners truly face

when they stepped off the shores of Sharkatraz?

♪ ♪

Alcatraz Island,

one of the most recognized landmarks

inside the San Francisco Bay.

Home to some of the most infamous criminals in history.

But the waters surrounding the island

belong to a different breed of predator...

sharks.

DOUGLAS: There are about 12 to 15

different species of sharks,

half those living here full-time.

The other half are visitors that come into and out of the bay.

NARRATOR: Yet scientists have said for decades

that the most notorious shark, the great white,

doesn't hunt inside the bay

where the prison island is located.

But that's all about to change.

2015.

On a sunny day in October,

hundreds of visitors just arriving for a tour of Alcatraz

witness something no one believed was possible,

less than 30 feet from the island.

WOMAN: (gasps)

BOY: That's a great white!

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh.

It's a shark attack.

NARRATOR: A great white shark attacks and devours a sea lion.

WOMAN: Ohh!

MAN: Whoa. BOY: Daddy, take a picture.

WOMAN: Holy moly.

BOY: It's right under us! A frenzy!

NARRATOR: This incredible, one-of-a-kind event

shocks scientists.

The area outside the bay,

known as the Red Triangle,

is notorious for white sharks.

They come here to feed on seals and sea lions.

From August through October

their numbers are at their highest,

but this is the first time in recorded history

that anyone has seen a great white

feeding inside the San Francisco Bay.

DOUGLAS: Since at least the 1880s there had been no records

of white sharks in the bay,

and it was always assumed that white sharks

did not enter the bay.

Why they didn't enter the bay, that was up to speculation.

And what the videos show is classic great white shark

predatory behavior.

And what is really amazing

is that why hasn't this happened sooner?

NARRATOR: For ocean experts like underwater explorer

Scott Cassell, it's a game changer.

SCOTT: Right here, just yards away,

is where the great white shark ate that sea lion.

That one big bite changed everything we know

about great white sharks and the science of San Francisco Bay,

and this is ground zero right here.

BOY: Go for the duck.

Look, there's its heart.

NARRATOR: The sighting reignites public fears

that deadly sharks cruise the bay in search of an easy meal.

A fear that once kept Alcatraz prisoners in line.

Imagine, if you will, right up there you're a prisoner

looking out of one of those windows on a nice, sunny day,

and you're looking at this cute, little seal,

then all of a sudden this huge great white shark grabs onto it

and ends its life in this big, frothy blood pool,

how it might change your escape ideas.

It would definitely change mine.

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh.

There's no way you could escape this place.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: On this island prison

no inmate could escape the legend of Sharkatraz.

Guards made sure prisoners thought that entering the water

would be a death sentence.

TOM: From the day one you came here,

they always had the word spread

between the prisoners and the officers

that if you did get away from the prison

that you would be eaten by the sharks,

and this, we believed it, I believed it,

everyone believed it.

This was the single most psychological weapon

that the prison authorities had,

was the threat of being eaten alive

in the bay waters around Alcatraz

by the sharks that came in under the Golden Gate Bridge.

NARRATOR: The guards used the prison rumor mill

to their advantage,

even telling tales of trained sharks patrolling the island

and an especially vicious one-finned giant

they called Bruce.

BILL: One of the wardens told the prisoners

that they captured a shark out in the bay,

brought him in, a great white.

They cut off one of his fins

so that he could only swim around in circles

around the water.

PHILIP: Well, we encouraged the belief

that there were sharks out there in the bay,

and indeed there were,

and I've had inmates point them out to me,

say, "Hey, Cap, look out there."

There's that fin sticking out of the water.

NARRATOR: But not everyone was deterred

by these stories of sea monsters.

Convicts on Alcatraz were the worst of the worst,

the toughest of the tough.

MAN: 105, 107, rack 'em.

NARRATOR: They were too hard to handle elsewhere.

MAN: All right, they're in, lock 'em down.

BILL: I'm Bill Baker, prisoner number 1259 AZ,

ex-prisoner from Alcatraz.

I was in for escaping from other prisons.

♪ ♪

We were locked in our cell most of the time,

and that was the worst part about it.

NARRATOR: For many inmates,

the strict rules meant to change their troublemaker ways

only made them more desperate to escape.

BILL: I think boredom will wear you out

in the long run.

Eventually it will drive you mad.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: In its 29-year history as a federal penitentiary,

prisoners attempted to escape Alcatraz 14 times.

Most were quickly captured or killed,

but in six of the attempts,

the desperate inmates actually entered the bay,

swimming into waters

they believed were filled with hungry sharks.

The first escapees, Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe.

December 1937.

After two years on the Rock, Cole and Roe have had enough.

For them, the allure of freedom far outweighs

any threat of sharks.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life here.

BILL: They had some serious time,

and they wanted to be free.

Simple as that.

I'd rather risk the sharks

than spend one more day on this rock.

NARRATOR: But escaping Alcatraz without a boat during winter

is nearly impossible.

The prisoners' fear of sharks is only one obstacle.

To swim all the way to shore,

Cole and Roe will have to fight

dangerously low water temperatures,

well below 50 degrees,

and powerful currents forcing them out to sea.

We got to figure out a way to get through those bars.

NARRATOR: But these determined inmates

think they've found a way out.

Both have earned time on a work assignment

north of the cellblock in the model industries building.

Inside they discover a window

hidden from the watchful eyes of guards.

Day after day they secretly saw the bars,

filing them down until the metal's thin enough to pry open.

They cover their slow, steady work

with shoe polish and grease.

Then, on a foggy day in December

the inmates set out to prove no prison is escape-proof.

When a guard leaves the men

to briefly check other work areas nearby,

Cole and Roe get to work busting out.

They quickly make their way to a fence along the water line

and break the lock.

They're home free...

or so they think.

♪ ♪

Using gas cans stolen from the model industries' building

for floatation,

they jump into the frigid bay...

And disappear.

They're never seen again.

No one knows what happened,

but most believe Cole and Roe drowned.

SCOTT: In 50-degree water

you can die in just a matter of hours.

Your time in that water is very limited safely.

NARRATOR: And besides the bitterly cold water,

there's the heavy fog that covers San Francisco

a quarter of the year.

On this particular day, the fog was so thick,

even searching for the men by boat was dangerous.

Disoriented by dense fog, pulled by powerful currents,

the escapees would likely never reach the shore.

But for some, including the prisoners

who remain on the Rock, there's a question.

Could they have been eaten by sharks?

♪ ♪

There are close to a dozen species of sharks

living in the bay.

They come in all shapes and sizes,

from bottom-feeding leopard sharks

to frighteningly large basking sharks.

Despite their enormous size,

basking sharks don't hunt mammals;

they're filter feeders.

But one shark, regularly found inside the bay,

could be dangerous.

The seven gill.

DOUGLAS: Seven gill sharks can get fairly large.

They can get up to 12 feet.

As adults they are known to prey on seals and sea lions.

They've actually been shown to form these semi-social groups

that appear to be hunting in packs.

But to date there are no confirmed attacks

by seven gill sharks on people.

They are more scavengers than they are predators.

NARRATOR: In fact, most of the shark species

that live in and around the San Francisco Bay

have never been known to attack humans...

except one: the great white.

DOUGLAS: These large sharks, 3,000 pounds,

with a bite radius of over 20 inches.

They can literally chomp a California sea lion in half.

They can disembowel a fully grown elephant seal.

And then, once it's dead,

take as many bites as they want to in leisure.

NARRATOR: They've evolved over millions of years

to be ultimate predators...

with constantly replenishing rows of razor sharp teeth,

specialized sensory organs

called the ampullae of Lorenzini

that hone in on the electric impulses of their prey...

And a deadly strategy of violently attacking from below.

Once a white shark zeroes in,

its target is in serious danger.

SCOTT: If you're in the water with a great white shark,

he'll see you, and you'll never see him.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Though great whites rarely attack people,

when it happens, it's terrifying.

In 1959 one shocking encounter reinforced all the stories

guards had told prisoners about deadly sharks.

It happened just four miles from the Rock,

a brutal attack,

where they least expect it.

(screams)

NARRATOR: May 1959.

San Francisco, California.

It's a warm, sunny day at Baker Beach,

a beautiful stretch of sand and surf

just outside the bay,

less than a mile southwest of the Golden Gate Bridge.

18-year-old college students

Shirley O'Neill and Albert Kogler

have come here to relax after a long week of classes.

The couple runs into the cool, inviting water.

The day couldn't be any more perfect.

♪ ♪

But that's all about to change.

They swim out past the waves,

heading into deeper, less turbulent waters.

While Albert looks out toward the open ocean...

Shirley sees a huge, dark shape pass by

just below the surface of the water...

And it's headed straight for him.

ALBERT: (screams)

NARRATOR: The water explodes.

It's a huge shark, close to 16 feet long,

sinking its teeth deep into Albert's flesh.

Shirley's instincts tell her to swim for safety.

But she can't let Albert die.

ALBERT: (screaming)

NARRATOR: As the shark bites down again,

she swims out to save him.

Reaching around Albert's torso,

she uses all her strength to fight her way back to shore.

ALBERT: (screaming)

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: But it's too late.

Albert's arm is nearly detached at the shoulder.

He slips into unconsciousness.

SHIRLEY: (sobbing) Albert!

NARRATOR: Just two hours later,

Albert Kogler dies from his massive wounds.

SHIRLEY: (crying)

NARRATOR: The lethal attack, right at the mouth of the bay,

shocks and terrifies the public.

SCOTT: Albert Kogler met his demise

by being attacked by a white shark on Baker Beach,

and if you look at that right here,

and if you just pan right over there,

you see how close we are to Alcatraz.

NARRATOR: Still, despite the proximity,

for decades many shark experts believed this kind of attack

could never happen in the waters surrounding the Rock.

The reason? The bay is brackish,

a mix of salty ocean water

flooding under the Golden Gate Bridge during high tide

and freshwater coming into the bay from inland rivers.

Brackish water is known to be inhospitable

to ocean-dwelling predators like white sharks.

DOUGLAS: What you would see if white sharks

were in that brackish mix of fresh and saltwater in the bay,

they're used to a much more salty marine environment,

and so they would have the reduction

of the ability to perform,

the ability for sensory structures to work,

decreased swimming ability,

malfunctions of the organ system,

or even failures of the organ systems

and will eventually lead to death.

So, physiologically, they can't endure

being in a subsaline environment.

NARRATOR: But then, in 2007 and 2008,

during a Stanford University study

following great white migrations,

sensors picked up the tracking tags

of five adult white sharks

crossing under the Golden Gate Bridge.

But even with proof

that great whites sometimes enter the bay,

until recently most experts believed the water was too murky

for white sharks to hunt successfully.

Algae and sediment, stirred up by tidal currents,

usually keep the bay visibility at just around three feet.

BOY: That's a great white!

NARRATOR: But the recent great white attack near Alcatraz

may indicate that the waters here are different

than we once thought.

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: To find out more, deep sea explorer Scott Cassell

is preparing to enter the bay near Alcatraz to see for himself

what the water conditions look like.

SCOTT: This is Spots, The Great White submersible.

It has a flatbed, so we can put different systems on it.

It can hover, it can search, it can go over distances.

What this is actually designed to do

is to be a work truck under water.

We can tie this off, and then it'll also be tied on the sub.

NARRATOR: Serving as a combat diver for 15 years,

he has over 13,000 hours of diving experience.

And so just stand there while I blow ballast,

and you'll see the...

NARRATOR: Cassell knows what to expect under water.

He's taken his custom submarine across the globe

to explore the world's oceans.

Now he'll use it to discover what's changed

beneath the surface of the bay

that could help explain the recent shark attack.

SCOTT: You get air in two places.

You want to double-check that?

Sound check.

SCOTT: Topside, topside. Do you read me?

Read you loud and clear.

SCOTT: All systems are green?

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: But here, diving deep into the waters near Alcatraz...

We got a really strong current right now.

I'm actually being blown with it, and this is a danger.

NARRATOR: He could get more than he bargained for.

(machine beeping)

NARRATOR: Scientists have long thought

that visibility is too poor

inside the murky bay for white sharks to hunt.

But the recent sighting raises new questions,

and Scott is hunting for answers.

It's a risky endeavor.

All systems are green?

Dive, dive, dive.

♪ ♪

Topside, topside, we got a really strong current right now.

I'm actually being blown with it,

and this is a danger,

so I'm gonna come up a little bit shallower,

trying to keep position.

WOMAN: Ditto.

NARRATOR: Stabilizing the sub, Scott takes his first look.

Okay, topside, I can see the bottom;

it's about 20 feet below us.

I can't believe this.

NARRATOR: The environment inside the bay

is different than he expected.

SCOTT: I cannot believe how clear it is

for San Francisco Bay.

This is amazing.

What's currently happening right now,

we are experiencing the tide coming in,

and of course that's clean ocean water coming into the bay,

so that explains the visibility,

but what I didn't expect was this level of visibility.

This is really clear.

NARRATOR: Historically, visibility inside the bay

has been just three feet or less.

Now Scott estimates he can see as far as 20 feet,

a far more suitable hunting ground

for oceangoing predators like great white sharks.

SCOTT: Topside, topside, request permission to surface.

WOMAN: You're coming up out of the water, right?

Yes, ma'am, we're arresting the sub.

The visibility was surprisingly good,

which means a visually oriented predator

like a great white shark could easily find a surface prey item,

like a seal, and slam it before that seal ever saw it coming.

NARRATOR: One possible explanation

for this remarkable clarity in the bay

may have something to do with the weather.

There's a relationship between salinity and visibility.

♪ ♪

When less river water flows into the bay,

salinity is higher and the concentration of silt is lower,

making the water clearer.

So dry weather typically leads

to higher levels of bay visibility.

DOUGLAS: That's part of a natural cycle

where the salinity increases and decreases from season to season.

But what we've seen more recently

is with the drought in California

there has been for the long term

far less input of freshwater

into San Francisco Bay,

and that has brought the salinity back up

to being very close to what it is in the ocean.

NARRATOR: Another possible explanation

for higher visibility is tidal currents.

The salinity and clarity of the bay

are changing constantly with the tides.

As ocean water flows in, the water becomes clearer.

So for inmates who are trying to escape Alcatraz,

the exact moment of their attempt

would have greatly impacted their odds

of coming face to face with a white shark.

In fact, one of the Rock's most famous and ingenious escapes

shows the incredible importance of timing

when it comes to safely navigating

the waters off Alcatraz.

♪ ♪

May 1962.

Frank Morris, a man whose prison record

once listed his occupation as escape artist,

refuses to be kept in a cage.

Here on the Rock he's in good company.

Fellow inmates Clarence and John Anglin also want out.

Stories passed down about Cole and Roe's escape attempt

more than 20 years before

convince prisoners the Rock isn't escape-proof.

Frank Morris spent a year and a half

planning and executing that escape.

Good, we're gonna hit the deadline?

Yeah, in a month we'll be ready.

All right, good.

BILL: It was very complicated.

They had to get a lot of materials.

They had to do a lot of things to make it successful.

NARRATOR: The men noticed the utility corridor

behind their concrete cell walls leads to a ventilation duct

on the roof of the cellblock.

Night after night, using sharpened spoons,

they quietly scrape at the concrete

surrounding an iron grate in the back of their cells.

Meanwhile, they make dummy heads from cloth rags and soap...

Paddles from stolen plywood...

And inflatable rafts from prison raincoats.

They hope these makeshift boats will keep them afloat,

outside the reach of any sharks they might encounter

when they enter the frigid bay.

♪ ♪

Then, on the night of June 11th,

sometime after 9:30 p.m.,

the escape begins.

Placing the dummy heads inside their blankets,

they crawl into the utility corridor...

And climb up toward freedom.

♪ ♪

Once outside, they quickly make their way through the shadows,

carrying their custom rafts, life preservers and paddles.

They're off the island.

But now, if their timing isn't just right,

powerful currents could carry the men out to the open ocean,

straight into the Red Triangle,

the great white's dangerous hunting grounds.

(underwater scream)

NARRATOR: June 1962.

On Alcatraz Island,

Frank Morris and brothers Clarence and John Anglin

have heard tales of the previous escape

by inmates Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe

25 years earlier.

No one knows what happened to Cole and Roe,

but the odds of success weren't in their favor.

I was able to get some hair from the barber shop.

NARRATOR: Still, Morris and the Anglins are convinced

the risks are worth the possibility of freedom.

After months of preparation,

the men have finally executed their plan.

MAN: Go, go, go!

NARRATOR: And they've made it to the water.

Pushing off into the night, the men paddle as fast as they can.

They immediately begin to feel the powerful current

sweeping them away...

And then...they're gone.

♪ ♪

The next morning...

Anglin! Wake up!

You're holding up the block.

NARRATOR: Guards discover the dummy heads...

Hey!

(whistle blows)

NARRATOR: And sound the alarms.

(alarm blaring)

But after a massive manhunt, authorities only find

the prisoners' custom-built escape items

washed up on shore along the bay.

Did they make it to freedom, did they drown,

or could they have been eaten by sharks?

Some believe Morris and the Anglin brothers,

using rafts to keep themselves out of the water,

had a far better chance of making it to shore

than previous escapees.

It's a mystery that continues to this day.

♪ ♪

The only way to know if Morris and the Anglins

could have reached the shore

is to know exactly what time they entered the water.

Strong tidal currents in the bay change dramatically

throughout the course of a day.

Using all available information on the tides,

a team of Dutch scientists has created a digital model

of the currents on the night of the great escape.

DOUGLAS: If we look at the San Francisco Bay,

we see in the middle is this little break

that we call the Golden Gate.

That's the only area of inflow and outflow

of water into the bay.

So if we look at the size of the bay, it's absolutely massive.

It's a huge body of water that at low tide

has to be funneled through that tiny, little gap,

and so what happens is that the water flow accelerates

and creates incredibly strong currents out the bay.

It's a very challenging environment

and a very dangerous environment.

NARRATOR: The computer model shows,

if they pushed off anytime between 9:30 and midnight,

the powerful outgoing tidal current would have swept them

straight out under the bridge and into the Red Triangle.

♪ ♪

This region, just outside the Golden Gate,

from Bodega Bay down to Big Sur and out to the Farallon Islands,

is rich with marine mammals.

It's an infamous great white hunting ground,

an area known for shark attacks.

DOUGLAS: The Red Triangle is notorious,

because it's one of the highest concentrations

of white shark attacks anywhere in the world.

NARRATOR: If tidal currents pulled the escapees out here,

their chance of encountering deadly great whites

would have increased dramatically.

It's a fact that surfers in the Red Triangle know all too well.

♪ ♪

October 2005, Salmon Creek, California,

a popular surf spot north of the Golden Gate.

It's a beautiful fall morning as 20-year-old Megan Halavais

steps onto the beach with a couple of friends.

Paddling 150 yards out, she picks a spot

to stop and wait for a set.

As she sits idly on her board,

her instincts suddenly kick in.

MEGAN: This kind of weird, horrible feeling,

like a tingle in the bottom of my spine,

and I just remember thinking,

"I really want to be over where the guys are."

NARRATOR: Suddenly, an enormous set of jaws

burst out from below.

This could be the end.

MEGAN: (screaming)

NARRATOR: A great white feeding near Alcatraz Island

has revived the legend of Sharkatraz.

What would have happened if escaped prisoners

encountered deadly sharks?

An infamous attack just off the coast

could provide a frightening clue.

October 2005, not far from the San Francisco Bay.

I remember looking back over my shoulder

and just seeing this huge dorsal fin behind me

and this big, gray body and boiling water,

and the next memory I have

is just my hands pressed up against gray flesh.

And then me, my board,

everything got yanked under water.

And everything was gone.

I was gone, my board was gone, the shark was gone.

NARRATOR: The giant great white swims straight down

with Megan's surfboard leash caught in its jaws.

Whatever it wanted to do,

it was going to do, and I was along for the ride.

NARRATOR: Then the predator's jaws slice through

the plastic leash,

allowing Megan to scramble back up to the surface.

But will the shark return for another attack?

MEGAN: I just grabbed the first body I could get

and just grabbed them and pulled my whole body up on top of them.

They were like, "Okay, okay,

just get on your board, get on your board."

NARRATOR: The enormous bite,

stretching from the top of her leg down to her calf,

has severed her muscle to the bone,

coming within an inch of a major artery.

Megan's lucky to be alive.

Her attack is not unique.

All along the California coastline

surfers are one of the most common victims of shark attacks.

But marine experts caution against

demonizing the predators.

Based on all the data collected

on these violent encounters so far,

scientists are confident great whites

aren't out for human blood.

In fact, most bites seem to be clear cases

of mistaken identity.

When they look up and they see a surfer

on a surfboard,

that nice, long, cylindrical body

with the flippers sticking off,

which happen to be our hands and feet,

we look just like a prey item,

we are a seal to them,

and so they rush up with great force of ambush,

and then they strike in,

and then they realize that they made a bad decision

after they've engaged their teeth.

But the damage to us is huge.

So when they spit us out, "It was a shark attack,"

and "Oh, my God, look at the blood, look at the injury,"

and it was just "whoops."

NARRATOR: But even though we know great whites

don't purposely hunt humans...

BOY: That's a great white!

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh!

NARRATOR: The newest sighting of a great white feeding in the bay

resurrects the question:

could Alcatraz escapees have made it to shore

without being attacked by sharks?

The last true Alcatraz escape could answer the question

once and for all.

♪ ♪

December 1962.

Just six months after

Morris and the Anglin brothers' great escape,

John Paul Scott thinks it's his turn to break out.

GEORGE: An inmate serving 20, 30, 50 years or life

has reached the point where anything is better than this.

So they would be willing to try anything,

almost to the point of suicidal, to get away from it.

NARRATOR: Working in the kitchen basement,

he discovers a window with bars

that someone else has already partially cut.

Scott decides he's going to finish the job.

Day after day, using anything he can get his hands on,

including string coated in floor wax and scouring powder,

he quietly wears away the remaining steel bar.

♪ ♪

And when he's almost done,

he decides to bring in a partner.

Been working on one of the windows

in the basement of the kitchen.

I'm ready to get off this rock.

I think you should come with me.

NARRATOR: He tells fellow inmate Darl Lee Parker

that he's getting out right now.

I'm in.

NARRATOR: All others who've tried

were captured or presumed dead.

But will they beat the odds and swim safely to freedom,

or will they fall victim to the deadly legend of Sharkatraz?

NARRATOR: They said it couldn't happen,

a great white shark feeding off Alcatraz Island

inside the San Francisco Bay.

BOY: That's a great white!

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh.

NARRATOR: Now, this recent sighting has people wondering

what really happened to the Alcatraz prisoners

who disappeared.

Did they drown,

or is the legend of Sharkatraz real?

The last true Alcatraz escape could finally reveal

if swimming off the Rock is a death sentence.

♪ ♪

December 16, 1962.

25 years to the day

after the first escapees disappeared off the Rock,

a new team of prisoners,

John Paul Scott and Darl Lee Parker,

are willing to risk swimming through shark-infested waters

to be free.

Their chances are slim.

Not one single inmate is known

to have ever escaped the Rock alive.

Six have been shot and killed by prison guards.

The ones who made it to the water were quickly captured

or presumed to have drowned.

But just after 5:30 p.m.,

Scott and Parker make it all the way to the island's rocky shore.

At the water's edge they blow up rubber gloves

and stuff them into prison shirts.

The crude floatation devices may help keep them from sinking.

But they won't protect them from the bitter cold water

or the sharks.

But they can't turn back now.

♪ ♪

Minutes later, Alcatraz guards discover the breach

and sound the alarm.

Boats immediately head out in search of the escaped convicts.

Then, just over 100 yards from the prison island,

on a small group of rocks known as Little Alcatraz,

they find one of the men clinging for dear life.

It's Darl Lee Parker.

John Paul Scott is nowhere to be found.

Is it possible he survived the dangerously cold bay water,

or did he encounter the swarming sharks

prison guards warn the inmates about?

♪ ♪

Finally, a call comes in.

Scott is alive and on the San Francisco shore.

Nearly two hours after his escape,

two young men find him clinging semiconscious

to the rocks at Fort Point, three miles away from Alcatraz.

He was lucky the way the current took him right out.

50, 60 feet to the right of him

would have been right out the Golden Gate Bridge,

and that would have been the end of him.

He landed on the rocks there,

just the last resort before being swept out into the ocean,

and he was so exhausted that he just collapsed on the rocks.

They scooped him up and took him back to Alcatraz.

But he swam it, he made it.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: John Paul Scott's survival is proof

that an inmate could swim across the bay

without encountering a man-eating shark,

and this fact has been proven many times since.

Hundreds of people swim from Alcatraz

to the San Francisco shore every year.

SCOTT: The reality is, is that the great white shark attack

probability is very low,

and there are probably swimmers to this day

that are swimming around Alcatraz

that a great white shark swims right underneath them,

and there's no event, because we're not on the prey list.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Experts believe it's highly unlikely

any of the escaped inmates encountered a great white shark

in the bay.

So what really happened to the prisoners who disappeared?

Many speculate that Cole and Roe drowned in the bay,

and as for Morris and the Anglin brothers,

some even think they made it to freedom.

WOMAN: (gasps)

NARRATOR: But likely no prisoners

would have even tried escaping

had they seen the massive shark attack off the Alcatraz pier.

BILL: I imagine the old warden would have loved

for a great white to put on a show

in front of the convicts there.

DOUGLAS: If great white sharks rediscover San Francisco Bay

as a potential feeding area, there is a bounty awaiting them.

There's huge numbers of California sea lions at Pier 39,

there's also an increasing population of harbor seals

at different rookeries around the bay.

So potentially this could be a feeding area

that could be rediscovered by the sharks,

and only time will tell if in fact they stop becoming

short-term visitors and start becoming long-term residents.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: In the end it seems that the tales guards told

inmates of man-eating sharks hunting in the bay

were nothing more than tools used to control the prisoners.

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh. Ohh!

NARRATOR: Yet the dramatic white shark feeding event

off Alcatraz could change things in the future,

reviving the legend of the inescapable rock

some call Sharkatraz.

Captioned by Captionmax