into the water as the ship rolled over on her way down". A later finding was that additional sea water ballast could possibly have helped the ship recover from the 70-degree roll. 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. Rescue work by and other ships of the fleet in the days that followed saved the lives of 7 officers, including the captain of the ship, and 55 enlisted sailors. 11 officers of the Hull, including the executive officer, and 191 enlisted sailors perished in the sea. In all, 790 men of the Fleet lost their lives in the typhoon. The subsequent Court of Inquiry found that though Halsey had committed an "error of judgement" in sailing the Third Fleet into the heart of the typhoon, it stopped short of unambiguously recommending sanction. Admiral Nimitz, Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, presented a six-page document to the Court, stating in his conclusion, among other recommendations directed strictly to ships' commanders, that "steps must be taken to insure that commanding officers of all vessels, particularly destroyers and smaller craft, are fully aware of the stability characteristics of their ships; that adequate security measures regarding water-tight integrity are enforced; and that the effect upon stability of free liquid surfaces is thoroughly understood". The executive officer was the father of rock journalist Greil Marcus. Years later, Marcus wrote that in December 2006 the survivors of the Hull held in Las Vegas what they determined would be their last reunion, and one of Marcus' daughters went. The people in the reunion related to his daughter, Marcus claimed, that when the original captain of Hull was told by one of the survivors that if he had still been the captain the ship would never have gone down, he shot himself. A few weeks after the events at sea, in January 1945, Halsey passed command of the Third Fleet to Admiral