Maryk Swims to Recover the Lost Paravane Float

Maryk Swims to Recover the Lost Paravane Float is a training incident that turns a routine recovery into a test of speed, seamanship, and personal resolve. When a sailor drops a paravane’s small red float into the water, Steve Maryk does not wait for a boat: he has the USS Caine stop and back, then swims after it himself. The float is recovered, and the ship finishes the exercise before its rivals.

The recovery problem

The incident follows an afternoon of practice maneuvers. Other minesweepers have launched their gear and are simulating movement through a minefield, while Willie Keith tries to make sense of the changing formations. At the end of the exercise, the order comes to recover the sweep gear. On the USS Caine, the minesweeping detail works quickly to bring both paravanes aboard.

The crew watches the other ships’ yardarms for black balls: a ball lowered there signals that a paravane has been recovered. The USS Caine lowers its port-side ball after fifteen minutes, and its starboard paravane is already in sight before the USS Moulton (DMS-21) hauls down one of its own. The recovery is proceeding well until a sailor handling the small red float loses hold of it. The float drops into the wake and drifts free, interrupting the work at its final stage.

Maryk swims after the float

Maryk sends word to the bridge. The USS Caine stops and backs slowly, while the float moves away from the port quarter. Rather than wait for a small boat, Maryk says he will swim for it and tells the chief to have the captain stop the screws. He wraps a line around his waist and goes over the side.

By then the sun has set, and the float is difficult to see against the darkening water. It lies about two hundred yards off the port quarter. Sailors line the rail and watch Maryk’s progress; some speak of sharks, and one says he would not make the same swim. The danger is discussed by the crew, but it does not alter Maryk’s course. He reaches the float, works around it for a short time, and signals that the men aboard should haul in the line. They pull the line back with him clinging to the float.

Maryk’s choice makes the recovery depend on his own effort as well as the ship’s. He is the first lieutenant, but here he works alongside the sailors and accepts the task himself when the equipment is at risk of being lost. The action is briskly practical: stop the ship, keep the screws from turning, secure a line, reach the float, and bring both swimmer and gear back aboard.

The parallel action on deck

Willie’s attention is divided while Maryk is in the water. A radioman brings him a dispatch and says the USS Caine is the action addressee; Tom Keefer has told him that the coding duty is his. Willie takes the message but says he will decode it in a few minutes, pockets it, and continues watching Maryk. The scene thus sets an assigned communications task beside the immediate spectacle of the recovery, without showing what happens to the dispatch afterward.

Willie hurries down to the fantail as Maryk approaches the ship. He slips on the wet deck and falls; a wave breaks over him, leaving him soaked. The float reaches the deck, and sailors reach out to help Maryk aboard near the propeller guard. Willie’s fall gives him a small, accidental share in the disorder of the recovery, though he has not entered the water. When Maryk notices his bedraggled appearance, Willie explains that he had been too absorbed in watching. His attention has shifted from learning the mechanics of hauling in paravanes to witnessing his superior officer complete the job himself.

The result and its significance

After climbing aboard, Maryk immediately asks how long the recovery took. The telephone talker reports forty-one minutes, measured when the float came aboard. A sailor points out that the other ships still have their black balls aloft, so the USS Caine has beaten them. Maryk is pleased not simply that the float has been recovered, but that no rival ship has finished first; he remarks that he would otherwise have heard about it. The crew’s competitive standard makes a mishap into a race whose result can be read from the other ships’ signals.

The close of the incident returns the scene to the crew’s easy familiarity. Maryk dismisses the danger of sharks, saying that they do not bother a swimmer who keeps moving, and jokes that he had been looking for an excuse to take a dip. The remark follows a risky act without turning it into a speech about courage. Instead, the recovery is presented through practical details, the crew’s watchful reactions, the official timing, and Maryk’s casual response. For Willie, it is an early view of leadership expressed as direct participation: Maryk accepts the task, brings the lost float back, and measures success by the same contest the crew has been watching.