Apra Harbor is the Guam setting for a brief but revealing episode aboard the USS Caine: while the ship is moored there, Captain Queeg’s search for a missing key turns the harbor stay into a tense shipboard operation, then an approaching typhoon forces the crew back to sea. The episode links the vessel’s internal disputes to the hazards and abrupt changes of its Pacific service.

Setting and Arrival

The USS Caine enters Apra Harbor in rain, with Guam’s rugged hills obscured by gray weather, and secures to a mooring buoy alongside the destroyer Harte. The setting is both sheltered anchorage and working naval harbor: ships can lie alongside one another, but the Caine’s stay is not undisturbed. Heavy swells later roll into the harbor from the storm offshore, causing the two ships to plunge and rub against each other as sailors work to protect their lines and fenders.

The Search Aboard the Caine

During the harbor stay, Queeg orders armed guards posted at intervals along the Caine’s port side to prevent anyone from passing a key to a friend aboard the Harte. He also asks Jorgensen to have the Harte’s chief censor notify him if any keys turn up in its mail. The precaution gives the search a conspicuously formal reach beyond the Caine, while the censor’s evident bewilderment underscores how unusual the request appears to an outsider.

At the same time, Alfred Ducely is preparing to leave the ship. He tells Willie Keith that he believes there is no key to find, but Queeg insists that the search proceed rather than accept that conclusion. With the seas worsening, Maryk announces a search of the ship’s spaces and directs the crew to clear them for personal searches. The location thus becomes the setting for an investigation that expands through the vessel even as the weather makes the harbor less secure.

Departure and Consequences

The search is overtaken by an operational order: all ships in Apra Harbor must prepare to get underway by 1700 and maneuver south to avoid Typhoon Charlie, which is approaching Guam. Maryk receives the dispatch, wakes Queeg, and begins preparing the Caine for sea. After two days of rain, gusty winds, and cross-swelling seas, the storm passes north of the ships. They divide into groups, and the Caine proceeds with the group bound for Ulithi.

Even the storm’s backwash leaves the aging minesweeper badly battered. Its stores are thrown about, dirty water sloshes through passageways, the rusty hull springs leaks, antennas are down, and a davit and both depth-charge racks are buckled. The arrival at sunny Ulithi therefore marks not simply a change of anchorage but the aftermath of a punishing passage from Apra Harbor.

Narrative Significance

Apra Harbor concentrates two kinds of pressure on the Caine. Queeg’s suspicion turns a missing key into guards, inquiries, and searches, while the incoming typhoon abruptly limits the time available for that internal dispute and dictates the ship’s movement. The harbor episode also places the vessel’s strained routines within a larger wartime system of orders and redeployment: the Caine leaves not by choice or after resolving its inquiry, but because the fleet must move to avoid the storm.

The novel identifies its ship and events as fictional and warns that operational details and places have been altered. Apra Harbor’s role is therefore literary rather than documentary: it supplies the setting for the key search and the forced departure toward Ulithi, not evidence of an actual USS Caine or historical incident.