USS Moulton

USS Moulton is the sister destroyer-minesweeper whose polished appearance and working record give Willie Keith a revealing contrast to the USS Caine. When Willie visits, he finds a ship that seems to embody naval order; yet its lost paravane, alongside the Caine’s superior minesweeping performance, complicates any simple equation between neatness and competence. The vessel becomes both a practical participant in the operation and a measure of how differently two nearly identical ships can present themselves.

Design and First Sight

At sea, USS Moulton first emerges as one of three distant ships closing on the rendezvous. Willie recognizes the destroyer-minesweepers by their distinctive silhouettes: three stacks separated by an untidy gap, small three-inch guns, a slanting flush deck, and two oddly crooked cranes over the stern. Their resemblance to the USS Caine is close enough for Captain Queeg to question the identification when the signalman reports USS Moulton among the ships. The recognition establishes a physical kinship before Willie has seen the differences that will matter more to him.

The vessels are later described as identical in structure, but their condition could hardly be more different. USS Moulton’s bulwarks and decks are an even gray, its ladder-rail cording new and white, and the leather life-line wrapping tightly sewn and rich brown. Its sailors wear clean dungarees and tuck their shirts into their trousers. On the USS Caine, by contrast, the life-line coverings are frayed, loose, and cracked with gray paint; rust and green primer interrupt the surfaces, and a loose shirt-tail seems almost emblematic of the ship. The comparison gives material form to the USS Caine’s reputation as an outcast: the difference is not in the type of vessel, but in what each ship’s visible upkeep says about its condition and identity.

Minesweeping and the Lost Paravane

USS Moulton takes part with the other sweepers in an exercise near a beach, where the formation enters shallow water and clears dummy mines. Willie’s interest sharpens when he sees the yellow, horned iron mines bobbing on the waves. The cables and paravanes, which had seemed to him like equipment for contests between minesweeper captains, now appear tied to a real and potentially lethal task. During the exercise, the USS Caine narrowly misses a mine cut by USS Moulton. Willie imagines the consequences if it had been live, and begins to wonder whether he should wait before seeking a transfer from minesweeping duty.

The operation also exposes a limit in USS Moulton’s performance. After the last sweep, the ships hope to reach Pearl Harbor before the submarine nets close, but USS Moulton loses a paravane during recovery. With the squadron commander aboard, it spends an hour trying to retrieve the float while the other ships wait. The recovery attempt lasts until sunset; the four old sweepers then have to circle outside the channel entrance all night rather than return to port. The delay makes the lost equipment more than a minor mishap: it changes the whole formation’s schedule and leaves the crews fretting through the night.

A Counterpoint to the USS Caine

The contrast between the ships becomes more complicated when Willie considers what each has done. USS Moulton is the model of cleanliness and order, while the USS Caine looks like a derelict beside it. Yet USS Moulton has lost a paravane, and the shabby USS Caine has led the ships in minesweeping performance. Willie cannot readily explain the mismatch. He wonders whether the lost float was simply an accident and whether the USS Caine’s effectiveness might be credited to Steve Maryk’s fishing knowledge. Neither possibility gives him a settled rule for judging the ships.

That uncertainty makes USS Moulton more than a standard of good appearance. Its immaculate quarterdeck initially seems to confirm that a ship can be orderly and efficient, but the lost paravane resists that easy reading; the USS Caine’s strong performance, in turn, prevents its decay from serving as proof of incompetence. Willie’s observations instead reveal how unstable the relationship is between visible discipline and practical success. In this world of destroyer-minesweepers, the rules he expects to connect appearance, command, and results do not reliably hold.

Ed Keggs Aboard

When the ships enter Pearl Harbor the next morning, USS Moulton and the USS Caine occupy a paired buoy berth. Willie obtains permission from Burt Gorton to cross over and visit Ed Keggs, his friend from the other ship. The contrast begins at the threshold: the USS Moulton’s quarterdeck is immaculate, and its officer of the deck looks as neat as an admiral’s aide. In the wardroom, Willie finds Keggs at a green-covered table, drinking coffee while working a coding device. Keggs jumps up at the sight of him, and Willie notices how thin and worn he has become—his cheeks prominent, his skin taut, gray strands in his hair, and dark rings beneath his eyes.

On a later visit, the clean wardroom and the condition of its officers offer a different picture of shipboard life. Keggs is absent from the wardroom; Willie finds him asleep at his desk, his face resting on unfolded blueprints and his hands hanging awkwardly toward the deck. The lamp shines directly on his closed eyes. He wakes with a gasp, then greets Willie with a sad smile. When Willie asks what he is doing with the blueprints, Keggs says he is taking an engineering course. These scenes make USS Moulton both a sharply defined ship and the setting for Willie’s encounters with a friend whose exhaustion complicates the vessel’s polished exterior.