The Caine's target towline breaks and the target is abandoned during the Caine’s target-towing assignment, when the towline parted and Captain Queeg chose not to recover the target. The incident became more than a lost piece of equipment: Queeg’s uncertainty over what to do, his appeal to ComServPac, and his decision to leave made the episode an early test of his command judgment. The target remained missing, and the handling of the loss became a source of official scrutiny and of Queeg’s growing suspicion toward his crew.

Causes and Background

The towline broke while the Caine was towing a target, but the supplied account does not establish the precise mechanics of the break at the moment it occurred. The later inquiry made that uncertainty central. Captain Grace asked whether Queeg had brought the ship around in a complete circle and cut its own towline; Queeg objected to the question but did not give a direct account of the turn. He said he had used standard rudder and that his logs would show he had never exceeded it. The distinction mattered: the line’s failure was one problem, while whether Queeg’s maneuver had caused it was another.

Once the target was lost, Queeg asked Chief Bellison how he would recover it. Bellison’s answer ranged through heaving lines, U-bolts, swivels, pelican hooks, slip hooks, pad eyes, spring lines, and chains, without giving Queeg a clear procedure. When Queeg asked whether anyone would be killed, Bellison replied that there was nothing to get killed about. The exchange showed the captain seeking reassurance as well as technical advice, but it did not resolve the recovery question. The executive officer, Gorton, had already looked unhappily between Maryk and Queeg when asked for his view, saying only that Steve could be relied on if he said so.

The Decision to Abandon Recovery

Queeg paced the bridge for several minutes, muttering, and then sent ComServPac a message asking whether it preferred that the Caine attempt to recover the target. While awaiting a reply, the minesweeper steamed in a long, lazy circle around the target for an hour. ComServPac responded, “Act at discretion.” Willie Keith delivered the message to Queeg on the port wing, where Gorton and Maryk were also watching the target.

Queeg treated the reply as an evasion of responsibility. He complained that the Navy was passing the buck, then said he would act at his own discretion. He reasoned that attempting recovery might cause the Caine to miss the next day’s exercise and could injure a sailor; his decision was to return to base rather than risk a complicated maneuver. He announced, “Let’s head for the barn.” His choice ended the effort to retrieve the target, although no exercise was scheduled for the following day. The Caine lay alongside the dock, doing nothing, while the target remained unrecovered.

The decision exposed a gap between having discretion and exercising command. Queeg had specifically requested instructions, but when ComServPac left the choice to him, he framed the choice chiefly as a danger to his own responsibility: he did not want to be held accountable for missing the exercise or for a sailor’s injury. The incident therefore turned not only on the practical question of whether the target could be recovered, but on whether a commanding officer could weigh the risk and accept the consequences of a decision.

Official Scrutiny

ComServPac ordered the Caine’s commanding officer to submit a written report in person to its operations officer at 1300 on 22 October. Gorton saw Queeg receive the torn-open envelope and read the message while still in his cabin, his face covered in shaving lather. Queeg’s head sank between his shoulders; his left hand trembled as he silently passed the mailgram to Gorton. He then took the steel balls from his khaki trousers and asked what the order meant. The notice converted the lost target from a local operational problem into a formal matter requiring Queeg’s personal appearance and written account.

At the interview, Queeg said that the chief boatswain’s mate had seemed unsure how to recover the target and that his officers had been equally vague. He maintained that returning to base for further duty was more important than spending an uncertain amount of time on a futile, complicated maneuver. Captain Grace rejected the premise that recovery was so difficult: he said it could be done in half an hour and that other DMS vessels had done it repeatedly. The tug sent to search for the missing target could not find it, and Grace stressed that the targets cost money.

Grace’s criticism focused on the decision rather than simply the loss. He told Queeg that the admiral’s anger was not chiefly because the target was gone, but because Queeg had failed to make an apparently obvious choice and take responsibility for it. He also placed the episode beside Queeg’s earlier grounding, his attempt to avoid a grounding report, and the report he eventually submitted, which Grace called a “phony gun-deck job.” In the towline discussion, Grace pressed Queeg on whether the ship had turned through a complete circle and cut its own line. Queeg called the question a personal insult and answered indirectly that, if it had happened, he should have recommended his own general court-martial. Grace said he would take Queeg’s word as a naval officer’s that it had not happened, but the exchange left the suspected maneuver unresolved rather than disproved.

Later Admission and Consequences

The incident returned in a later confrontation between Queeg and Maryk over Stilwell’s emergency leave. Queeg ordered Maryk to write the Red Cross to verify whether Stilwell’s mother had died or been ill, and linked the supposed deception to the trouble he had faced with ComServPac. In doing so, he said, “Remember when we cut the towline? That started it—” Maryk was startled: it was the first time Queeg had admitted that the line had been cut.

Queeg then blamed Stilwell for failing to warn him that the ship was in danger. He connected that accusation to his earlier reprimand of Stilwell for making his own decisions at the helm, and interpreted the helmsman’s silence as deliberate retaliation. He described Stilwell as a troublemaker who bore grudges and ordered Maryk to investigate him. The later conversation thus altered the meaning of the original loss: Queeg now acknowledged the towline had been cut, while presenting the event as part of a grievance against a subordinate. It did not establish exactly how the line parted or settle whether Queeg had cut it with his maneuver. It did show how the incident persisted in his account of command—as the beginning of his trouble with ComServPac and as evidence, in his view, of disloyalty aboard ship.