Caine's Broken Target Towline and Lost Target is a target-towing mishap that becomes a test of command judgment. As the USS Caine turns repeatedly while towing a gunnery target, it passes over its own cable; the towline is later found broken and the target adrift. Although Steve Maryk offers an immediate recovery plan, Philip Francis Queeg treats the loss chiefly as a defective-equipment problem and elects to seek instructions rather than recover the target. The episode links a navigational failure to a larger conflict over responsibility aboard ship.

Setting and Competing Duties

The trouble develops amid an argument about uniform orders. Queeg turns from Willie Keith, whom he has ordered to explain a crewman's untucked shirt, to Tom Keefer, the officer of the deck. He holds Keefer responsible for the violation because the sailor belongs to his department, and insists that the officer of the deck answers for everything that happens during the watch. Keefer responds that an officer's ability to supervise a department is limited while he has the deck. The exchange matters operationally: while Queeg concentrates on enforcing his order and assigning blame, the ship is maneuvering with a long towline behind it.

The Caine responds to the helm in a wide right-hand arc. The target and line lag behind, then drift up alongside the ship. Stilwell, at the helm, can see the geometry of the danger: the ship's turning diameter is about a thousand yards, while the towline is twice that length. At the ship's current rate of turn, it will pass inside the target and over its own cable. Although Stilwell would ordinarily alert the captain, he keeps silent during the confrontation and holds the ordered right standard rudder. The episode therefore places a visible navigational hazard beside the chain of command that might have corrected it.

The Circle and the Loss

The target crosses ahead of the bow as the Caine continues to turn. The ship steams over its own tow cable, and the passage causes only a slight jar; at first, there is no apparent change to the target. The ship's wake traces a complete circle about a mile across, and the Caine begins following the same track again. The circular wake makes the maneuver's practical consequence legible: the ship has not brought the target around as expected, but has continued turning through the space occupied by its own tow.

Queeg asks why the target is not coming around, then orders the engines stopped and the ship steady. From roughly five hundred yards off the port beam, the target remains afloat, but a telephone message from Chief Bellison reports that the towline has broken. Queeg rebukes the certainty of the report, treating the break as an unconfirmed surmise. He orders the Caine ahead at standard speed with the rudder amidships to establish whether the target is still attached. After steaming two miles, the ship can see that the target is stationary and no longer in tow.

The account Queeg prepares for ComServPac describes a defective towline that parted in the southwest corner of the gunnery area, calls the drifting target a menace to navigation, and recommends that a tug recover or destroy it the following morning. The report also says the Caine is returning to base. Its wording presents the break as a gear failure, although the ship's circular maneuver and passage over its own cable immediately preceded the loss. The evidence establishes that sequence without definitively specifying the precise mechanical cause of the break.

Recovery Dispute and Immediate Aftermath

Maryk arrives with a different plan. The motor whaleboat is swung out and a target detail is standing by; if the Caine closes to about fifty yards, he estimates recovery will take roughly an hour. Queeg asks what they would recover, then has Willie show Maryk the prepared dispatch. He argues that responsibility for emergencies arising from defective equipment does not require him to spend the Navy's time on a recovery, and orders Keefer to obtain a course back to Pearl Harbor. Maryk is left confronting the difference between a recoverable target in sight and a written report that has already framed the loss as a reason to return.

Queeg later sends another dispatch asking ComServPac whether it wants the Caine to attempt recovery. After the ship spends an hour circling the target, the response gives the captain discretion. Queeg complains that the instruction passes responsibility back to him, then decides to head for base rather than risk missing the next day's exercise or causing an injury during recovery. The qualification in the narrative is pointed: no exercise is scheduled for the following day, and the Caine lies alongside the dock doing nothing. The feared consequence that helps justify his decision does not materialize as a real scheduling demand.

Significance and Historical Status

The episode's decisive contrast is between the practical response Maryk has prepared and Queeg's preference for reporting the problem, obtaining direction, and avoiding personal exposure to a risky decision. It also shows how the captain's insistence on total accountability for the watch sits uneasily beside his later attempt to classify the loss as a defect beyond his responsibility. The untucked shirt that starts the exchange is minor; the maneuver unfolding while attention is fixed on it is not. The event thus makes the cost of misplaced command attention concrete without resolving every technical detail of the cable failure.

The novel's prefatory note identifies the Caine and the events aboard it as fictional, and cautions that operational circumstances, ship names, missions, and naval procedures have been altered. The target loss should therefore be understood as an episode in a fictional wartime narrative, not as a claim about an actual ship or documented naval incident.