From Herman Melville's Captain Vere (who hanged Billy Budd) to Herman Wouk's Captain Queeg (who rolled ball bearings during the Caine mutiny), naval literature has teemed with tales of rumbustious skippers and mutinous crewmen. Of late, the U.S. Navy has pitched and rolled to a real-life story that has all the elements of legend: a destroyer in war-torn waters, a high-handed captain called Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter, a roster of rebellious junior officers respectively named Hardy, Generous and Belmonte, and a precipitate change of command that reverberated clear to the Secretary of the Navy—thereby threatening the careers of some of the service's brightest brass.
When Lieut. Commander Arnheiter took command of the U.S.S. Vance in Pearl Harbor shortly before Christmas 1965, he found the aging radar-picket destroyer "literally crawling with cockroaches," her bridge and ladders mottled with "coffee spillage," her forecastle the scene of frequent fistfights in which nonrated men "routinely intimidated, threatened and physically struck" their superior petty officers.
Turns on the Bollard. The officers themselves—mostly reservists eager to return to civilian life—were "living in extreme messiness," and they barely deigned to say "Aye, aye, sir." Though the Vance had won an E for engineering excellence and performed commendably on lonely, months-long patrols in the northern Pacific, she seemed a slack ship to Arnheiter's eye, and only "a taut ship is a happy ship." Arnheiter was up-taut himself: a Naval Academy "ring-knocker" he was passed over once for lieutenant and at 40 was one of the oldest Annapolis men of his rank with command responsibility. Aware that he would be heading for Viet Nam six days later, Arnheiter took a few more turns on the bollard.
He "promulgated" Elbert Hubbard's "A Message to Garcia" to the crew, instituted daily inspections, held a series of "all hands aft" services, where he quoted from Admiral Farragut and Stonewall Jackson. Since the Vance would be involved in Operation Market Time, the Navy's screening of Vietnamese coastal junk and sampan traffic for Viet Cong infiltrators, Arnheiter also insisted on a refresher course in small arms, ordered the purchase of a $950 speedboat from the ship's recreation fund. Though the 20-knot boat was supposedly to be used primarily for off-duty water skiing and swimming parties, he had it mounted with a .30-cal. machine gun for patrol work, since it was much faster than the Vance's motor whaleboat.