Caine’s Towed Gunnery Target

The Caine’s Towed Gunnery Target is the floating object used in a destroyer gunnery exercise that becomes the focus of a serious failure aboard the USS Caine. It is meant to trail behind the minesweeper while other ships fire, but a circular turn brings the Caine across its own towline; the line parts, and the target is left adrift. The episode makes this working object more than a feature of the exercise: its changing position gives visible form to a command crisis, as Philip Francis Queeg struggles to recognize what has happened and decides whether the ship should recover it.

Role in the Gunnery Exercise

The target begins the episode as the necessary object of a planned firing run. It trails a mile behind the Caine as a division of destroyers deploys for the afternoon’s final run. The destroyer squadron leader announces readiness over the short-wave speaker in the wheelhouse, and the Caine signals the start of the exercise by hoisting a flag. The guns open fire in repeated salvos, with the target providing the point toward which the ships direct their practice.

This arrangement puts the Caine in a supporting role: it carries and tows the target while the destroyers conduct the firing. The target’s position therefore matters to both the gunnery run and the minesweeper’s navigation. During the turn, it lies forward of the beam, while the towline extends behind it. The narrative gives concrete measurements that make the danger legible: the Caine’s turning diameter is a thousand yards, and the line is twice that length. From the helm, John Stilwell can see that the ship is on course to pass inside the target and over its own cable.

The Turn and the Broken Towline

Stilwell holds right standard rudder, as ordered. Although he understands the danger posed by the ship’s path, he is reluctant to alert Queeg after the captain has made the officer of the deck responsible for everything occurring during the watch and is preoccupied with a sailor’s untucked shirt. The target drifts across the bow as the Caine continues its circle. The ship passes over its own tow cable; there is only a slight jar, and at first the target appears to remain intact.

The circle itself becomes an important clue. The Caine’s wake forms a complete loop about a mile across, and the ship begins following the same track again, still turning under the rudder. Queeg questions why the target is not coming around with the ship, then orders the engines stopped and the ship steadied. From the fantail, Chief Bellison reports that the towline has broken. Queeg challenges the certainty of the report, treating it as a surmise rather than accepting it as a practical warning.

The ship then steams ahead for two miles. The target dwindles to a stationary dot on the waves, making its separation from the Caine unmistakable. Queeg acknowledges that the ship no longer has it and writes a dispatch reporting a defective towline, an adrift target, and a possible navigation hazard. He recommends that a tug recover or destroy it the following morning and orders that the message be sent on the harbor frequency.

Recovery Disputed

The target detail is ready to act. Steve Maryk reports that the motor whaleboat is swung out and that recovery should take about an hour if the Caine closes to within roughly fifty yards. Queeg asks what is to be recovered, then has Willie Keith show Maryk the dispatch. The contrast is sharp: Maryk has brought forward a specific plan and an estimated time, while Queeg’s written report presents the loss as a reason to return to Pearl Harbor.

Queeg explains his choice as a limit on his responsibility. In his view, defective equipment is the responsibility of the service command that supplied it; his duty is to report the failure and return to base rather than spend time attempting recovery. He asks Tom Keefer for a course back to Pearl. Maryk, surprised that Queeg appears not to understand the ship’s circular course and the loss of the target, turns to Keefer for an explanation. Keefer cannot explain the captain’s thinking, but recognizes that the command is in trouble.

Queeg later sends another dispatch asking ComServPac for instructions and saying that recovery can be attempted if desired. The Caine steams in a long circle around the target for an hour while awaiting a reply. ComServPac leaves the decision to the ship. Queeg treats that answer as a transfer of responsibility rather than clear guidance: concerned about missing the next exercise or risking a sailor’s life, he chooses to head back instead of recovering the target. The episode establishes the target as adrift and a potential navigation hazard, but the cited account does not describe its eventual recovery.

Significance and Fictional Status

The target’s importance comes from the sequence of decisions organized around it. First it is the distant focus of a coordinated firing exercise; then its position reveals that the Caine is turning in a full circle; finally its stillness confirms the towline has parted. Its loss converts a routine task into a question of whether the commanding officer can interpret events and act on the knowledge of the crew. The target does not itself explain the failure: the ship’s path, the broken line, Maryk’s proposed recovery, and Queeg’s dispatches disclose it piece by piece.

The incident also sets practical responsibility against formal reporting. Queeg does report the defect and seeks instructions, but his attention to protecting himself from blame and avoiding further risk leads him away from the immediate recovery plan offered by Maryk. The target thus connects an error in navigation to the novel’s broader depiction of command: responsibility cannot be discharged simply by recording a problem when the object of the task remains out on the water.

The novel’s prefatory note identifies the Caine and the events aboard it as fictional, and states that no ship named USS Caine exists or existed. The target belongs to that invented shipboard narrative, not to a claim that this particular gunnery incident occurred in an actual naval operation.