DeVriess: You, uh, saw yourself on a carrier, or a battleship, no doubt.Keith: Yes sir, I had hoped that ---DeVriess: Well, I onlyhopethat you""re good enough for theCaine.Keith: I shall try to be worthy of this assignment, sir.DeVriess: She""s not a battleship or a carrier; theCaineis a beaten-up tub.After 18 months of combat, it takes 24 hours a day just to keep her in one piece.Keith was assigned to follow the smooth-talking, sarcastic Lt.Keefer for a tour of the obsolete and "beaten-up" tub.Although heCainehad been designed to be a minesweeper, it hadn""t been used to sweep mines in a year and a half:The first thing you""ve got to learn about this ship is that she was designed by geniuses to be run by idiots.The younger American, named Curtin (B-movie actor Tim Holt), asks the mangy American drifter Dobbs how many centavos are left between them and wonders whether they can afford a bed in a cockroach-infested flophouse.) In the Hardware section of the store, Roger conveniently found tools they needed to pry open the large grillwork panels: "One stop shopping.On a flowery lawn in the small riverside town of Cresap""s Landing on the Ohio River [a Mark Twain-like environment], a young nine-year old boy John (Billy Chapin) is playing happily with his little sister four-year old Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) and her doll named Miss Jenny when he sees a car speeding down the road.In the following scene the next day, he is confined o the second-floor bedroom/sitting room of the Pollitt plantation mansion with a broken ankle.