The Caine Mutiny

The Caine Mutiny is a sea yarn plus. It is a full, colorful novel of two main strands. One is the story of Willie Keith; the other is the strange triangle on the old destroyer-minesweeper Caine which results in the almost incredible fact of a mutiny aboard a United States Navy ship in World War II.

Willie Keith, through whose eyes the reader sees the Caine mutiny, starts out as a careless, good-humored Princeton boy and ends as the grim and battered captain of the Caine. The story of his growing up is dramatized, his long love affair with May Wynn, who scrapes a living as a singer in the in the lower reaches of the Broadway night-club world.

The triangle on the Caine consists of Captain Queeg a half-comic, half-tragic petty tyrant; his executive officer, Lieutenant Maryk, an excellent naval officer, but beyond his depth in the tense and frightening situation that develops on the minesweeper; and the third-in-command, Lieutenant Keefer, an embittered, witty intellectual who sparks the revolt.

Parallelling the experience of a confident young man entering the military life, the novel starts in a humorous and romantic vein. When Willie Keith comes aboard the battle-scarred tramp called the Caine the tone begins to deepend and the lens to broaden. Tremendous scenes follow – the mounting tension on board as the ship prepares to go into the Kwajalein invasion; the wild panorama of the typhoon off the Philippines in December 1944, at the height of which the mutiny takes place; and the court-martial of Maryk which follows, and which turns on the testimony of Willie Keith.