The Caine breaks the target towline and abandons the target

The Caine breaks the target towline and abandons the target during a target-towing operation near Pearl Harbor. As Captain Queeg pursues a uniform violation on the bridge, the ship turns in repeated circles, crosses its own towline, and loses the target. Queeg then orders a return to base rather than attempting recovery, despite Steve Maryk’s objections and the waiting recovery detail. The episode makes a minor disciplinary matter collide with navigation, seamanship, and command responsibility—and leaves the officers confronting not only a lost target but a captain who disputes what the ship has plainly done.

The reprimand and the turn

The trouble unfolds while the target and its towline trail behind the Caine. Willie Keith begins to explain that he had been on the fantail, but Queeg cuts him off: he is not asking for an alibi, he says, but addressing Keith’s failure to carry out orders and make the crew understand his uniform requirements. Queeg orders Keith to submit a written report. He then turns to Tom Keefer, the officer of the deck, and demands an explanation for why the first man to violate the uniform order belongs to Keefer’s department. Keefer replies that a department head has limits while standing watch; Queeg insists that the officer of the deck is responsible for everything that happens aboard ship during his watch.

At the same time, the Caine is swinging right. The target and towline lag behind the turn and drift up the starboard side. Stilwell understands the geometry: the ship’s turning diameter is a thousand yards, while the towline is twice that length. At the present rate, the Caine will cut inside the target’s path and pass over its own cable. Ordinarily Stilwell would alert the captain, but he keeps quiet and holds the helm at right standard rudder, as ordered. Queeg continues the reprimand, requiring reports from both Keith and Keefer about the untucked shirt and Keefer’s watch. The target moves across the bow while the operational danger remains unaddressed.

The ship crosses its own towline

On the forecastle, Chiefs Budge and Bellison notice that the ship is cutting back across the towline. Budge hurries to the lifelines to look over the side; Bellison asks whether he should yell. Budge answers that it is already too late to stop. They fear the cable may wrap around the screws, and watch as the Caine steams over it. The ship gives only a slight jar and continues on. Apparently the target itself has not been damaged, but the chiefs’ alarm turns to disbelief as they realize that the ship has completed a full circle and is beginning another.

The wake makes the repetition visible: a complete circle of smooth green water, flecked with bubbles and about a mile across. Still heeled by the rudder, the Caine plows back into the same track. Budge and Bellison wonder whether the captain has lost control of the situation or whether the rudder or cable has failed, and run off the forecastle to investigate. On the bridge, however, Queeg is still finishing what the narration calls the shirttail emergency. He tells signalman Urban that he may adjust his uniform; Urban stuffs in his shirt and stands quivering at attention. Queeg dismisses him, then sees the target ahead again. Only then does he ask where the ship is and what is happening.

Stilwell explains that he is holding right standard rudder because Queeg ordered it. Queeg acknowledges that he gave the order, looks between the target and the departing destroyers, and commands all engines to stop and the ship to steady. The Caine wallows to a halt with the target about five hundred yards off the port beam. Chief Bellison reports by telephone that the towline has broken. Queeg challenges the report as an unsupported surmise and tells the telephone talker to relay his objection. The message is repeated to Bellison in the captain’s profane wording, even though the ship has just stopped and the target is visibly separated from it.

The broken cable and Queeg’s account

Queeg orders the Caine ahead at standard speed, the rudder amidships, to determine whether the target is still in tow. The ship steams two miles while the target shrinks to a stationary dot on the waves. In the wheelhouse, silence gives way to Queeg’s conclusion that they no longer have the target. He shrugs to Keefer and attributes the failure to defective equipment supplied by ComServPac: if the cable parts when the ship turns only a few degrees, he says, that is the supplier’s responsibility. He directs Willie to prepare a dispatch reporting that the towline parted southwest of the gunnery area, that the adrift target is a navigation hazard, and that the Caine is returning to base. The proposed message suggests that a tug recover or destroy the target at dawn.

Maryk arrives as Willie takes the dispatch. The motor whaleboat is already swung out, and the target detail is standing by. Maryk 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. When Maryk identifies the target, Queeg shows him the dispatch and explains his decision: his responsibility, as he sees it, does not include emergencies caused by defective gear. His duty is to report the failed towline and return, not to spend Navy time on what he regards as a futile operation. He tells Keefer to obtain a course back to Pearl Harbor.

Maryk’s question to Keefer—whether the captain understands that the Caine circled and cut the target loose—sets the officers’ disagreement in stark terms. Keefer declines to explain Queeg’s thinking and warns that they are in trouble. In the charthouse, navigator Burt Gorton is calculating a sun line when Keefer requests a course to Pearl. Gorton is astonished and asks about the target. Maryk explains Queeg’s reasoning and urges Gorton to talk the captain into recovering it. Gorton refuses to try to persuade Queeg to do anything he has already decided against.

Recovery refused

Queeg interrupts the discussion, demanding the course he has requested. Maryk apologizes if he seems pigheaded but persists: the target is worth thousands of dollars, and he believes it can be recovered. Queeg challenges both the claim and the ship’s capacity to perform the job. The Caine has never recovered a target before, he points out; an attempt might keep them out all afternoon, risk drowning enlisted men, cause them to miss the closing of the harbor gate, or delay their return before the next operation. His argument frames abandonment as prudence and recovery as an unnecessary gamble, while Maryk’s estimate of an hour and the assembled recovery detail make the abandoned opportunity concrete.

The scene ends before Gorton gives his opinion or the recovery question is resolved. Its immediate outcome is nevertheless clear: the towline has parted, the target is adrift, and Queeg has ordered the Caine home rather than putting the waiting boat and detail to work. The incident’s force comes from the contrast between what the crew observes and what the captain emphasizes. The officers have watched the ship circle, cross its cable, and lose the target; Queeg’s attention moves from the uniform order to defective equipment and the dangers of trying to recover what is lost. By turning a visible navigation failure into a dispute over responsibility, the episode deepens the conflict between Queeg and Maryk and shows how his command decisions are judged by officers who believe the ship’s own actions—not merely its broken gear—must be accounted for.