The Caine Mutiny

Humphrey Bogart as Commander Queeg sits in the dock. A bead of sweat crosses his upper lip as he stares down his nemesis Lieutenant Barney Greenwald, played by José Ferrer, in the climatic courtroom scenes of the film adaptation of Herman Wouk’s bestselling novel. Greenwald pressures Queeg into admitting responsibility for cutting his own towline. Not sure what will happen next, Queeg nervously fondles his balls. (Ahem! – ed.) Well, technically, he is manhandling a brace of ball-bearings, this was 1954 after all. Turning them over and over in his right hand, Queeg’s balls click obsessively whenever he’s anxious.

I was kind of doing the same thing as we were setting anchor out on the Great Bahama Bank when Aleta’s engine suddenly coughed and stalled. I called back to Carol from the foredeck, ‘What just happened?’ ‘I’m not sure’, she said, ‘she just stopped!’ Curious. Hmmm. A real ball-bearing scratcher. “Okay, try her again.” Same thing – cough, stall and dead. Hmmm. ‘Sounds like it might be a transmission issue’, I said. ‘Let me have a look at the engine and make sure that’s okay.”

Clambering down the companionway I reached under the steps to open the engine bay hatches and turned on the light. We have a big, bright red, 55 horsepower, four-cylinder Westerbeke engine. It has a Hurth V-drive transmission (with fluid that needs checking every week and replacing every 300 hours, in case you were wondering). Our Westie’s block was made by Isuzu. It’s a design that mainly enjoys life powering farm tractors. Westerbeke took the basics and then ‘marinized’ them by adding raw water intakes, heat exchanger zincs, bigger alternators, that kind of stuff. With a flashlight I poked around in the darker recesses of the engine room looking for running fluids or smoking guns, but found everything intact.

Back upstairs in the cockpit Carol called, ‘Look! Nell is almost under water! She’s under the stern and sinking!’ At that moment I knew what had happened. Like Queeg, we’d crossed over Nell’s tow line and it had wrapped itself around Aleta’s propeller. It was a great ad for using ugly polypropylene painters that float.

There was no wind and the anchor was down, if not set, so we were safe for the moment. This knotty situation would require untangling. I donned my best Race Bannon swim trunks and grabbed my snorkeling gear. Fins and sharp knife in hand I dropped into the clear, Bimini blue water just as the sun dipped below the horizon. In the twilight, I felt like Jonny Quest free diving to watch his dad working in his diving bell. It’s a little-known fact that Jonny and his buddy Hadji held the world’s free diving records throughout the 1960’s.

Under Aleta things were a bit of a mess. Two lines wound around each other, one red the other green like Christmas tinsel, and tangled the prop. Taking another deep breath, I went under and first cut the line holding Nell under Aleta’s stern and pulled the line free of the rudder. That accomplished two things, first, Nell, who floats even when swamped, was now ready to be emptied, and the prop was now ready to be freed. In a couple of knife strokes I cut off the last of the line and was able to visually inspect the propeller. All seemed in working order. Hauling up Nell with the main halyard, just as we would if we were pulling her up on deck, the water poured out of her. That was done.

The sun had all but disappeared by now, so we restarted the engine and properly backed down on the anchor and set it securely for the night. There were no winds to speak of and the currents led us a merry dance around the anchor. At dawn we were ready to carry on to New Providence.