- For the Broadway play, see The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.
The Caine Mutiny is a 1951 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Herman Wouk. The novel grew out of Wouk's personal experiences aboard a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific in World War II and deals with, among other things, the moral and ethical decisions made at sea by the captains of ships. The mutiny of the title is legalistic, not violent, and takes place during a historic typhoon in December 1944. The court-martial that results provides the dramatic climax to the plot.
The Caine Mutiny reached the top of the New York Times best seller list on August 12, 1951, after 17 weeks on the list, replacing From Here to Eternity.[1] It remained atop the list for 32 weeks until March 30, 1952, when it was replaced by My Cousin Rachel.[2] It moved back to first place on May 25, 1952, and remained another 15 weeks, before being supplanted by The Silver Chalice, and last appeared on August 23, 1953, after 122 weeks on the list.[3]
Plot summary
The story is told through the eyes of Willis Seward "Willie" Keith, an affluent, callow young man who signs up for midshipman school with the United States Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army during World War II. The first part of the novel introduces Willie and describes the tribulations he endures because of inner conflicts over his relationship with his domineering mother and with May Wynn, a beautiful red-haired nightclub singer who is the daughter of Italian immigrants. After surviving a series of misadventures that earn him the highest number of demerits in the history of the school, he is commissioned and assigned to the destroyer minesweeper USS Caine, an obsolete warship converted from a World War I destroyer.
Willie, with a low opinion of the ways of the Navy, misses his ship when it leaves on a combat assignment, and rather than catch up with it, ducks his duties to play piano for an admiral who has taken a shine to him. But guilt-stricken by a last letter from his father, who has died of melanoma, he reports aboard the Caine. He immediately disapproves of its decaying condition and slovenly crew, which he attributes to a slackness of discipline by the ship's longtime captain, Lieutenant Commander William De Vriess.
Willie's lackadaisical attitude toward what he considers menial and repetitive duties brings about a humiliating clash with De Vriess when Willie neglects a communications message. While Willie is still pouting over his punishment, De Vriess is relieved by Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, a strong, by-the-book figure whom Willie at first believes to be just what the rusty Caine and its rough-necked crew needs. However, the Caine is sent to San Francisco for an overhaul, and Queeg browbeats his officers into selling their liquor rations to him. In a breach of regulations, Queeg smuggles the liquor off the ship and when it is lost by a series of careless mistakes, blackmails Willie into paying for it by threatening to withhold his shore leave. Willie sees May on leave, and after sleeping with her, decides he has no future with a woman of a lower social class. He resolves to dump her by not replying to her letters.
As the Caine begins its missions under his command, Queeg loses the respect of his crew through a series of incidents:
- he grounds the ship on his first sailing, then attempts to cover it up while blaming his helmsman, Stillwell;
- causes the loss of a gunnery target sled by steaming over the target's towline while distracted by a petty disciplinary action (and again blames Stillwell);
- hounds and court-martials Stillwell for being absent without leave;
- twice under fire leaves a battle area, once abandoning troops under his protection to fend for themselves;
- suffers severe migraine headaches and rarely leaves his cabin;
- and becomes obsessed over the theft of a quart of strawberries, reliving an episode from early in his career in which he solved a shipboard theft and received a commendation.
He is regarded as tyrannical, cowardly, and incompetent. Tensions aboard the ship lead Queeg to ask his officers for support, but they snub him as unworthy, believing him an oppressive coward.
The crew refers to Queeg as "Old Yellowstain" following the invasion of Kwajalein. The Caine, ordered to escort low-lying Marine landing craft to their line of departure, instead drops a yellow dye marker to mark the spot when Queeg fears the ship has come too close to shore under fire, then leaves the area. The sobriquet, a double entendre, refers to both the dye marker and his apparent cowardice.
Communications officer Lieutenant Tom Keefer, an intellectual, former magazine writer and budding novelist who has chafed under Queeg's authority, and initially portrayed as a sympathetic, if not heroic character, plants the suggestion that Queeg might be mentally ill in the mind of the Caine's executive officer, Lieutenant Stephen Maryk, "diagnosing" Queeg as a paranoid. He also steers Maryk to "section 184" of the Navy manual, according to which a subordinate can relieve a commanding officer for mental illness.
Maryk keeps a secret log of Queeg's eccentric behavior and decides to bring it to the attention of Admiral William F. Halsey, commanding the Third Fleet. Keefer reluctantly supports Maryk, then gets cold feet and backs out, warning Maryk his actions will be seen as mutiny. In this scene Keefer is shown to be cowardly. Soon after, the Caine is with the fleet when it is caught in the path of a severe typhoon, a terrible ordeal that ultimately sinks three destroyers and causes great damage and loss of life. At the height of the storm, Queeg's apparent paralysis of action convinces Maryk that he must relieve Queeg of command on the grounds of mental illness in order to prevent the loss of the Caine. Willie Keith, on duty as the Officer of the Deck, supports the decision, although his decision is based on his hatred for Captain Queeg. The Caine is ultimately saved, apparently by Maryk's timely decision and expert seamanship.
Maryk and Willie are charged at court-martial with Conduct to the Prejudice of Good Order and Discipline, a catch-all charge, instead of making a mutiny. When Maryk is tried first, Keefer distances himself, even though he has no Navy career in mind, and shows himself to be a moral coward. Lieutenant Barney Greenwald, a Jewish naval aviator who was a crack attorney in civilian life, is appointed to represent Maryk. His opinion is that Maryk was legally unjustified in relieving Queeg after the captain was found to be sane by three Navy psychiatrists. Despite his own disgust with Maryk's and Willie's actions, Greenwald decides to take the case.
During the trial, Greenwald unrelentingly cross-examines Queeg until he is overcome by the stress and displays a confused inability to handle the situation. Greenwald's tactic of attacking Queeg results in Maryk's acquittal and the dropping of charges against Willie. Maryk, who aspires to a career in the Regular Navy, is sent to command an LCI, ending his ambitions, while Queeg is transferred to an obscure naval supply depot in Iowa.
At a party celebrating both the acquittal and Keefer's success at selling his novel to a publisher, Greenwald shows up intoxicated, and accuses Keefer of being a coward. He tells the gathering that he feels ashamed of having destroyed Queeg on the stand, because Queeg did the necessary duty of guarding America in the peacetime Navy, which people like Keefer (and by implication, Willie), saw as beneath them. Greenwald further points out that without the protection of people like Queeg, Greenwald's mother could have been "melted down into a bar of soap", which is what he says is happening to the Jews under Hitler's reign in Europe. Greenwald tells the gathering that he had to "torpedo Queeg" because "the wrong man was on trial"—that it was Keefer, not Maryk, who was "the true author of the Caine Mutiny". Greenwald throws a glass of yellow wine on Keefer's face, bringing the term "Old Yellowstain" full circle back to the novelist.
Willie returns to the Caine in the last days of the Okinawa campaign as its executive officer. Most of the officers have been transferred to other ships. Keefer is now the captain, succeeding a trouble-shooter from the Regular Navy who restored order to the crew. Ironically, Keefer's behavior as captain is similar to Queeg's. The Caine is struck by a kamikaze, an event in which Willie discovers that he has matured into a naval officer. Keefer panics and orders the ship abandoned, but Willie remains aboard and rescues the situation.
Keefer is sent home after the war ends and Willie becomes the last captain of the Caine. He soon receives a medal for his actions following the kamikaze—and a letter of reprimand for his part in unlawfully relieving Queeg. The findings of the court-martial have been overturned after a review by higher authority. Willie discovers he agrees that the relief was unjustified and probably unnecessary.
Willie keeps the Caine afloat during another typhoon and brings it back to Bayonne, New Jersey, for decommissioning after the end of the war. After reflecting at length, he decides to ask May (now a blonde and using her real name of Marie Minotti) to marry him. However, this will not be as easy as he once thought it would be, as she is now the girlfriend of a popular bandleader. Willie faces a challenge just as great as the one he has overcome.
Historical Background
The two ships that author Herman Wouk served on in the Pacific were destroyer-minesweepers converted from World War I-era Clemson-class destroyers, the USS Zane and USS Southard. The USS Caine, as described, fits the description of such a Clemson-class DMS conversion. This class of ship was named for U.S. Navy Midshipman Henry A. Clemson, lost at sea on 8 December 1846, when the brig USS Somers (1842) capsized off Vera Cruz in a sudden squall while chasing a blockade runner. In November 1842 the USS Somers was the scene of the only recorded conspiracy to mutiny in U.S. Naval history (the Somers Affair) when three crew, a midshipman, a Boatswain's mate, and a seaman were clapped in irons and subsequently hanged for planning a takeover of the vessel.
Many of the incidents and plot details are autobiographical. Like both Keefer and Willie, Wouk rose through the ship's wardroom of Zane from assistant communicator to first lieutenant, and then was executive officer of the Southard, recommended to captain the ship home to the United States at the end of the war before it was beached at Okinawa in a typhoon.
Adaptations
The film The Caine Mutiny was based on the novel and starred Humphrey Bogart as Queeg.
After the novel's success, the court-martial sequence was adapted into a full-length, two-act Broadway play, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, by author Herman Wouk. Directed by actor Charles Laughton, it was a success on the stage in 1954, opening almost exactly five months before the release of the film. The stage version starred Lloyd Nolan as Queeg, John Hodiak as Maryk, and Henry Fonda as Greenwald. It has been revived twice on Broadway, and was presented on television in 1955, as a live presentation, and in 1988, as a made-for-television film.
See also
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