Target lost and not recovered after the towline breaks

The loss of the target after the Caine’s towline broke became a test of Captain Queeg’s judgment and willingness to accept responsibility. Steve Maryk believed it could be recovered quickly, and Burt Gorton had seen a similar recovery completed in about half an hour. Queeg nevertheless turned back, later defended that choice as a response to uncertainty and operational risk, and did not acknowledge that the Caine itself had cut the line until much later.

The recovery decision

With the target still in view, Queeg questioned whether the Caine’s crew could carry out what he regarded as a specialist recovery. He raised the prospect of wasting the afternoon, endangering enlisted men, missing the closing of the gate, and failing to return before sunset if a new operation order arrived. Maryk offered to recover the target in an hour. When Queeg asked Gorton for an opinion, the executive officer answered hesitantly but indicated that Maryk could be relied upon. Queeg then called for Chief Bellison and asked whether anyone would be killed; Bellison told him there was no danger of that.

Rather than accept Maryk’s offer or decide immediately, Queeg paced the bridge and sent ComServPac a dispatch asking whether the ship should attempt recovery. The Caine spent an hour steaming in a long circle around the target while the reply was awaited. ComServPac responded, “Act at discretion.” Willie Keith delivered the dispatch to Queeg on the port wing, where Gorton and Maryk were also watching the target. The response gave Queeg authority to decide, rather than prescribing either course.

Queeg treated that discretion as a reason to avoid taking the risk. He complained that the Navy passed responsibility down and then demanded a receipt, and said he would not risk missing the next day’s exercise or breaking a sailor’s neck. He ordered the Caine back to port. The decision had a concrete immediate result: the ship returned, but no exercise was scheduled for the next day, and the Caine lay alongside the dock doing nothing. That contrast sharpened the question of whether the return had been necessary.

The inquiry and the contested account

The decision drew scrutiny from ComServPac. When an official mailgram called the episode a “Fiasco!” Queeg asked Gorton whether he had made any mistake, presenting himself as willing to hear an honest answer and emphasizing their friendship. Gorton hesitated. He suspected ComServPac might have heard about the towline being cut, but Queeg had not yet admitted that it happened, so Gorton avoided raising it directly.

Instead, Gorton identified a narrower flaw in Queeg’s decision: the captain might have overestimated the difficulty of recovery. Gorton recalled an exercise with the USS Moulton in 1940, when its towline had parted and the crew recovered it without strain in about half an hour. Queeg responded by asking why this information had not been given to him earlier, when it could have affected his command decision. The exchange shifted attention from whether recovery was feasible to whether Queeg’s subordinates had supplied him with adequate advice—and whether he was using their earlier silence to deflect scrutiny.

At a later inquiry, Captain Grace asked why Queeg had not recovered the target. Queeg accepted responsibility in general terms, while also arguing that his officers and chief boatswain’s mate had been vague and uncertain. He said he had judged it more important for the Caine to report back to base for further duties than to spend an uncertain amount of time on complicated maneuvers. Grace disputed that description: recovery was not complicated, he said, and other minesweepers had done it repeatedly in half an hour. The target cost money, and a tug sent to search for it could not find it.

The cut towline and its delayed admission

Grace pressed Queeg for the details of the Caine’s turn, asking whether it had made a complete circle and cut its own towline. Queeg did not answer the substance of the question at once. He objected that it was a personal insult, prompting Grace to deny any intent to insult him and repeat the request for a direct answer. The inquiry thus made explicit a possibility that Queeg’s earlier account had left unacknowledged: the loss might not have resulted simply from a difficult recovery or uncertain seamanship, but from the Caine’s own maneuver.

The admission came later, in a private confrontation with Maryk after the emergency leave Maryk had arranged for Stilwell. Queeg demanded that Maryk investigate whether Stilwell’s mother was really ill, then referred to the earlier incident: “Remember when we cut the towline? That started it—” Maryk was startled because this was the first time Queeg had admitted that the line had been cut. Queeg then blamed Stilwell, claiming the helmsman had failed to warn him of the danger and had stayed silent out of resentment after Queeg had reprimanded him. He described Stilwell as a troublemaker and said he intended to pursue him.

Consequences and significance

The incident’s consequences extended beyond the missing target. The failed recovery became the subject of an official rebuke, a command inquiry, and a dispute over what information Queeg had received and when. Gorton’s example from the USS Moulton made a half-hour recovery a concrete alternative to Queeg’s account of a complicated and potentially dangerous operation; the search tug’s failure to find the target established the material cost of returning without it.

The later admission also changed the meaning of the earlier exchanges. Queeg had first treated the loss as a problem of uncertain expertise and competing duties, then questioned why Gorton had withheld useful experience. His eventual acknowledgment that the Caine had cut the line connected the loss to the ship’s own handling, while his immediate turn to blaming Stilwell showed how he recast responsibility as a subordinate’s failure. The episode therefore links a practical decision at sea to the larger conflict over Queeg’s command: he invokes responsibility when explaining his choice, but the inquiry and his delayed admission expose how insistently he redirects responsibility when its particulars threaten him.