Reportedly, some time before "Hull" became locked "in irons," some officers had debated whether to remove captain Marks from his command in order to turn the ship to a safer course, but the executive officer, Greil Gerstley, refused to do so on the grounds that there had never been a mutiny on a US Navy ship. This incident provided novelist Herman Wouk with the inspiration for the climax of his novel "The Caine Mutiny", in which a captain is actually relieved of his duties by his officers in the course of Typhoon Cobra.