Caine loses its towed target during a routine towing exercise, but the loss becomes more than an equipment mishap: it exposes how Captain Queeg’s preoccupation with enforcing uniform rules and assigning blame can displace attention to the ship’s immediate situation. After the ship passes over its own cable and the towline parts, Queeg reports defective gear and orders a return to Pearl Harbor, while Steve Maryk argues that the target can still be recovered. The abandoned target thus becomes the point at which a practical disagreement over salvage also reveals a deeper conflict about what command requires.

The turn and the danger to the tow

The episode unfolds while Queeg is reprimanding Willie Keith over an exposed shirttail. Keith tries to explain where he had been, but Queeg rejects the explanation as an alibi and makes the issue his failure to carry out orders and impress the crew with the captain’s uniform requirements. He orders Keith to submit a written report. Queeg then turns on Tom Keefer, the officer of the deck, demanding an explanation for the uniform violation within Keefer’s department. Keefer replies that a department head has limits while he has the deck; Queeg insists that the officer of the deck is responsible for everything that happens aboard ship during his watch.

As this exchange occupies the bridge, the Caine is turning in a wide arc to starboard. The target and towline lag behind and drift up the ship’s starboard side. Stilwell can see the danger in the geometry: the ship’s turning diameter is one thousand yards, while the towline is twice that length. At the current rate, the Caine will cut inside the target and cross its own line. Ordinarily, Stilwell would alert the captain; instead, afraid to speak during the confrontation, he keeps the helm at right standard rudder. The event’s immediate peril therefore develops alongside Queeg’s insistence that every detail falls under someone’s responsibility, while the helmsman who recognizes the danger does not voice it.

The Caine steams over the tow cable. The chiefs on the fantail cling to the lifelines and watch the target, far off the port beam. The crossing produces only a slight jar, and the ship continues; apparently, nothing has happened to the target. But the wake records what the bridge has not yet recognized. Bellison and Budge see a complete circle of smooth green water, about a mile across, and realize that the ship has come around and is beginning the same turn again. With the rudder still over, the Caine is tracing its own circular track. Their astonishment gives the maneuver a grimly comic edge: from the fantail, the repeated circle is unmistakable, even as the captain remains occupied with the uniform violation.

Discovery of the broken line

Back on the bridge, Queeg dismisses Urban after allowing him to tuck in his shirt. Only then does the target’s reappearance ahead draw his attention. He looks between the target and the departing destroyers, rushes into the wheelhouse, and demands to know where the ship is and what is happening. Stilwell answers that he is holding the right standard rudder Queeg ordered. Queeg acknowledges having given that order, then commands all engines to stop and the ship to steer as directed.

The Caine stops with the target about five hundred yards off the port beam. Bellison reports by telephone that the towline has broken and the ship no longer has the target. Queeg rejects the report’s certainty, calling it a surmise, and orders the Caine ahead at standard speed with the rudder amidships to test whether the target remains attached. The ship steams two miles. The target becomes a small, stationary dot on the waves. Only then does Queeg announce that the ship has lost it.

Queeg’s written account frames the loss as a failure of equipment: the dispatch states that a defective towline parted in the southwest corner of the gunnery area, that the drifting target is a navigation hazard, and that the Caine is returning to base. It recommends that a tug recover or destroy the target at dawn. The report records the broken line and the target’s danger to navigation, but not the ship’s circular course or its passage over the cable. The gap matters because the dispatch turns a chain of events involving the Caine’s maneuver into a problem attributed to defective gear.

Recovery refused

Before the ship leaves, Maryk arrives with a practical alternative. The motor whaleboat is swung out, and the target detail is standing by; he estimates that recovery will take about an hour if the Caine closes to roughly fifty yards. Queeg responds by asking what there is to recover, then has Willie show Maryk the dispatch. Maryk’s surprise at the question and at the written order makes the disagreement concrete: he is prepared to act on the target’s visible presence, while Queeg treats the decision to return as settled.

Queeg argues that responsibility for emergencies caused by defective equipment does not include attempting recovery. If ComServPac has supplied a towline that parts, he says, the captain’s duty is to report it and return home rather than spend Navy time pursuing a fruitless operation. He directs Keefer to obtain a course back to Pearl Harbor. This reasoning gives the order a procedural rationale, but it also forecloses the recovery Maryk has proposed before the crew tries it. The stranded target is at once a hazard that Queeg’s dispatch acknowledges and an object he declines to retrieve.

Maryk follows Keefer aside and asks whether Queeg understands that the ship circled and cut the target loose. Keefer does not claim to know what is happening in the captain’s mind; instead, he warns Maryk that they are in trouble with him. When Queeg reappears, Maryk apologizes for seeming pigheaded but persists: the target is worth thousands of dollars, and he believes recovery is possible. Queeg challenges the basis of that confidence by asking whether the ship has ever recovered one. Maryk admits that it has not, but continues his appeal. The exchange ends with the feasibility of recovery still contested; the evidence establishes Queeg’s return order and Maryk’s objection, not the eventual fate of the target.

Significance

The lost target makes a small operational failure expose a larger weakness in the Caine’s command climate. Queeg demands that the officer of the deck be accountable for every event, yet the scene shows how fear of his reprimands can inhibit a timely warning: Stilwell sees the likely collision with the towline but keeps silent. The captain’s attention to the shirt violation occupies the same stretch of action in which the ship circles and crosses its cable. The contrast does not erase the crew’s duties, but it places the demand for discipline beside the consequences of enforcing it without responsive attention to the ship’s movement.

The event also establishes a difference between reporting an incident and taking responsibility for its practical consequences. Queeg’s dispatch identifies a defective line and a navigation menace, then recommends that another vessel deal with the target later. Maryk instead sees an opportunity—and an obligation—to recover it with the boat and detail already ready. Because the Caine has not recovered a target before, his confidence is not based on precedent; his argument rests on the worth of the target and the possibility of acting now. The disagreement turns the broken towline into a test of judgment: whether command means limiting action to reporting a failure or attempting a solution while the problem remains within reach.