You are correct, Maxiboi, the Harpoon stayed connected for 2 minutes, I believe. Because people wanted the gun to be (more) useful and not end up flying in directions that don't make sense, because of the Harpoons genius physics, Muse decided to, instead of fixing the physics, add an incredible amount of force to it and decrease the time it stays connected to just a few seconds. It's incredible long reload time comes from, I believe, awkm, who argumented that it is not fun for a ship to be constantly harpooned (but being shot by double Minotaur is, I guess).
Then during the patch that changed the Carronade, Muse forgot all sense in logic and made the gun useless and pointless and never reverted the code to where it actually reeled stuff in, because that is too much effort apparantly.