The Caine Mutiny
First edition cover
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| Author | Herman Wouk |
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| Cover artist | John Hull |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
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Publication date
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1951 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Preceded by | City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder (1948) |
| Followed by | Marjorie Morningstar (1955) |
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 Typhoon Cobra, in December 1944. The court-martial that results provides the dramatic climax to the plot.
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 novel 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, the daughter of Italian immigrants. After barely surviving a series of misadventures that earn him the highest number of demerits in his midshipman's class, he is commissioned as an ensign and assigned to the destroyer minesweeper USS Caine, an obsolete warship converted from a World War I-era 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. He has second thoughts after reading a last letter from his father, who has died of melanoma, but soon forgets his guilt in the round of parties at the admiral's house. Eventually, he reports aboard the Caine. Though the ship has successfully carried out its combat missions in Willie's absence, the ensign 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 duties brings about a humiliating clash with De Vriess when Willie forgets to decode a communications message which serves notice that De Vriess will soon be relieved. 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. But Queeg has never handled a ship like this before, and he soon makes errors, to which he is unwilling to admit. The Caine is sent to San Francisco for an overhaul, in an admiral's hope that the captain will make further mistakes someplace else. Before the ship departs, 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, blackmails Willie into paying for it. 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 let the relationship die by not replying to her letters.
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