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Philip D. Cave

FayObserver.com reports that the Hennis members selection is still ongoing, apparently they have 11.

The Telegraph.co.uk reports the following: US Navy crew’s mutiny against the ‘Sea Witch’ captain who ‘ belittled’ them

Standing on the bridge of her warship with the ocean before her and a crew of men awaiting her command, the future looked fantastic for Captain Holly Graf, the first American woman to take charge of a US Navy cruiser. As she left harbour in the Mediterranean early in 2003 there was more riding on her shoulders than simply the command of the U.S.S. Winston S Churchill and her crew. But today her career is in tatters. Capt Graf was relieved of her command after a top-level Navy investigation found that she had subjected her own crew to “cruelty and maltreatment”. It found that she unleashed expletive-ridden tirades that demeaned and humiliated crew members – men as well as women – and she earn a reputation as a captain who was feared, not respected. Her crew gave her nicknames intended to sum up the malice and spite they thought she felt for them – the Sea Witch, Horrible Holly, and Miss Bligh, in a reference to the tyrannical captain of HMS Bounty who caused the most famous mutiny in the Royal Navy’s history in 1789. One of the worst incidents came as the Winston S Churchill left a Sicilian port under Capt Graf’s command on the eve of the Iraq War. The vessel is one of the most prestigious in the US Navy and the only one to fly the flag of a foreign navy alongside the Stars and Stripes – the White Ensign of the Royal Navy. On the bridge that day was a Royal Navy navigator assigned to the 9,200 ton, 510ft ship, the only such position in the US fleet. As she entered choppier waters, a shudder ran through her hull. Capt Graf wrongly thought it had run aground, and her response was not the epitome of cool-headed leadership that is so admired among sailors. She grabbed the Royal Navy officer, who later told investigators that Capt Graff had “got in my face and screamed ‘F****** *****. You ran my f****** ship aground.” Fatally for her career prospects, it was not the only such incident. But she was able to move on to command the USS Cowpens, a 9,600 ton cruiser based in Yokosuka, Japan. She had been due to take up a high-level job in the Navy Staff at the Pentagon but has now been re-assigned to the Naval Surface Warfare Centre, a weapons research unit in Virginia.

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