Running over the tow-line; Why so serious?

I have always had the same question.

In the military generally there is zero tolerance for mistakes, no excuses.

I remember seeing a documentary about a towline being snapped back so hard it severed a man's leg.

I think mostly what they were talking about was his demeanor and psychological condition. So, those negative traits aren't just hanging around being annoying or overbearing or unpleasant, they belie a real, serious problem that this guy is psychologically unfit for duty.

If you have a link to the clip/scene you're talking about, though, send it along. I haven't seen The Caine Mutiny in YEARS, so I could be conflating later concerns with this scene.

A late reply, but here goes ...

> after all training exercises are held so that mistakes are made when lives are not at stake, and not when it counts, even for a Captain.

A good point, but it really doesn't apply here. The training exercise was gunnery practice. The Caine's job was to tow targets into position for other ships to shoot at. Queeg and the men of the Caine weren't being trained to do anything on that day, they were helping to train those on the other ships.

> first obvious chink in the armor of the Captain is [steaming over his own tow line]

In the book it's not Queeg's first screwup. On his first day as captain, while backing the Caine away from its mooring he backed it into an underwater mud bank. (Later his superior officer says that was mere bad luck which could have happened to anybody.) Regulations required him to report this piece of bad luck, but he unsuccessfully tried to cover it up. Then when he cut his own tow line he tried to cover up his mistake again, lying that the towline was defective and had broken by itself.

Also note that he didn't recover the towed target. The book elaborates on that. His officers and chiefs advise him that it would be simple, not hazardous, and could be done quickly. It's obvious that he should recover it, but he leaves the target out there and returns to port. Now it's adrift and a menace to navigation.

So here's a captain who runs the ship all the way around to actually run over his own tow line. That's not just a momentary lapse in judgment, that's being so engrossed in chewing the sailor out over a shirt tail that he forgot everything else that was happening for several minutes. He then lies about it, and fails to clean up his own mess when he's easily able to do so. Cutting the line is bad enough, it made him look like an idiot, but how he handled it afterward is even worse.

> could the line get caught in the vessel's propeller

In the book one chief says to another, "what if that gets caught in the screws?" -- so yes I think.