Willis "Willie" Keith has been fairly protected, sheltered from the harsher realities of life by his doting yet domineering mother. Fearful of being drafted into the Army, Willie signs up as a midshipman, hoping to miss the War altogether. After an eventful beginning Willie is assgned to the USS Caine, a WWI destroyer turned minesweeper.
Willie has never seen Navy life as being real, and he fails to take his assignments seriously, starting with his response when he misses his rendezvous with the Caine. When he finally catch up with her Willlie discovers that the Caine is barely held together, both physically and disciplinarily, a situation he attributes to the captain. Between his contempt for the Navy in general, and De Vriess in particular, Willie falls foul of him and, unable to acknowledge that the incident was his own doing, sulks and blames his superior.
When De Vriess is relieved Willie is ecstatic - the new captain is determined, military and thorough. It doesn't take long, though, for Willie to discover that Queeg is manipulative, bullying and petty, and he quickly loses the respect of his crew. Hidebound by the rules, and apparently terrified of doing wrong, or at least of being seen to do wrong, Queeg is inept, distracted from the big picture by little trivialties, furious if crossed, and a coward.
This last is the deciding factor in turning Queeg's officers against him, and when Queeg conducts an inquiry into the disappearance of a quart of strawberries, reliving a triumph of his early years, the disquiet turns to mutiny. Keefer, an intellectual passing time as Communications Officer while writing a novel, sows the seeds, suggesting that Queeg is mentally ill and implying that he ought to be relieved as unfit for duty. Maryk, second in command, begins secretly keeping a log book of all Queeg's strange behaviour and, in the midst of a severe typhoon, with Queeg apparently unable to make an independant decision, Maryk relieves his captain, supported by the officers on deck.
Though it only occupies the tail end of the book, Maryks' court martial and its aftermath constitute the meat of The 'Caine' Mutiny. While the lead up to that point, including what led Willie to the ship, is obviously necessary for the mutiny to have any power, I felt the long and somewhat rambling first half dated the novel, though this wasn't something I noticed when I first read it, over a decade ago. I just kept thinking how much better a tighter version of the text would be, with less focus on Willie and his pre-'Caine' life - his domineering mother, doomed (or is it?) love affair with the night club singing daughter of Italian immigrants, casual disregard of the Navy as real, and piano-playing gifts, all unquestionably contribute to his role in the lead up to the mutiny and to the mutiny itself, but the parts of the books that sang for me were those that dealt with the increasingly eccentric Queeg, and the court martial scenes. In comparison with their vibrancy, the rest of the novel felt like it was just marking time.
I'm glad I reread what I recalled being an interesting and captivating novel of psychological drama, but I don't think I'll need to read it again. - Alex
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