This article appeared in The Washington Post, 6 April 2020. I re-posted my piece on my blog for those that do not have a subscription to WaPo.

The recent firing of Captain Brett Crozier, the commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, resulted in a social media frenzy and yet another political crisis for President Trump to endure — one that has only grown more intense now that Crozier has tested positive for covid-19. Crozier was fired for writing a letter to his naval superiors requesting that his aircraft carrier put ashore in Guam so that he could isolate 90 percent of his crew.

“Removing the majority of personnel from a deployed U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier and isolating them for two weeks may seem like an extraordinary measure,” wrote Crozier. But he made clear that it was “a necessary risk to ensure the health and safety of our Sailors” after more than 100 of them had tested positive for covid-19.

Captain Brett Crozier (photo courtesy of New York Times Magazine)

Crozier felt that the evacuation of the ship was not proceeding fast enough. No one yet knows exactly how the captain’s last letter made its way to the press, but it likely had something to do with him sending it to more than 20 naval and Pentagon personnel. Acting Navy secretary Thomas Modly told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius that he thought Crozier had lost “'situational awareness”' and wanted to act before President Trump felt the need to intervene. It is easy to see Crozier’s firing as another case of Trumpian attempts to stifle negative news, or perhaps another way to inform whistleblowers that they will not be tolerated. But it actually illuminates a bureaucratic battle with roots in more than 250-years of tradition of military protocol and decorum. At stake: who wields power with ships at sea.

In May of 1756, British Admiral John Byng pulled his 10-ship fleet into Gibraltar. The U.K.’s Admiralty Office had sent Byng to reinforce and protect Fort St. Philip on the Balearic island of Minorca, even though the ships were undermanned and ill-fitted for the job.

However, when Byng reached the Gibraltar garrison, he was informed that France had already landed over 15,000 troops on Minorca. The War Office in London ordered a regiment of Marines to be transported from where they were stationed in Gibraltar to reinforce Minorca. However, Gibraltar commander, General Thomas Fowke, with the backing of numerous army officers, held a war council to refuse to allow Byng to have those reinforcements for the mission.

But Admiral Byng’s ships were sickly. They lacked supplies and sailors were fatigued or ill after an arduous and storm-riddled journey. Even worse, the port facilities at Gibraltar were in disrepair — ill-suited for Byng and his crew to do the maintenance they needed on their ships. Byng sent underlings to jerry-rig what they could to repair and reinforce his fleet. From all directions, the admiral was surrounded by a cavalcade of sour news.

This situation prompted Byng to make a fateful error — he decided to write a letter to his superiors.

“If I had been so happy to have arriv’d at Mahon before the French had landed,” he wrote to the Admiralty on May 4, “I flatter myself I should have been able to have prevented their getting a footing on that Island.” Byng was saying that the blame lied elsewhere — with his superiors — for the French arriving before him and taking Minorca.

Byng further informed his superiors, in this case, Lord George Anson, that he took the advice of experts, army engineers and artillery men. They counseled the admiral that when he arrived at the garrison on Minorca, “Communication will be cut off” and that it would be “impossible for our Boats to have a passage to the Sallee Port of the Garrison,” since the French will likely have “Erected Batteries on the two Shores near the Entrance of the Harbour.” Thus, any attempt to communicate or land Marines would have to run through a gauntlet of French cannonading. Byng was arguing that the mission appeared doomed with the French already in control of Minorca.

Nonetheless, Byng persisted in his assignment and sailed for Minorca to see firsthand the status of the garrison and whether he could be of assistance.

Byng arrived off Port Mahon and in the act of attempting to communicate with the garrison of Fort St. Philip spotted warships belonging to France. The garrison was already under light bombardment from the French army that begun to surround the fort. The next day the two fleets fought an indecisive battle. Byng withdrew to Gibraltar with 42 dead, three ships badly damaged, one barely afloat.

The admiral was repairing his ships and gathering supplies to return to Minorca, this time carrying recently arrived reinforcements and sailors. That’s when the admiral was recalled — not for his actions in the battle, but on the basis of the letter he had written before leaving Gibraltar. Byng’s superiors decided that he was not a “fighting” admiral and that the tone of his May 4 letter signaled defeat before the battle ever occurred.

Before he arrived home, things got significantly worse for Byng. Cognizant of other losses in the Empire, British cabinet ministers attacked the admiral’s character in the press, leaving the public incensed. Anxiety, and a bad start for Britain in the early throes of the Seven Years’ War, made it easy for government hacks to generate false stories and rumors against Byng.

Byng was arrested. At his court-martial, Byng was found innocent of “cowardice” and “disaffection” but could not beat the charge that he failed to do “his utmost” to defeat the French in battle. For this Admiral John Byng was executed by firing squad on March 14, 1757.

Voltaire in “Candide” best summarized and lampooned the decision to judicially murder Byng. “In this county,” he wrote, “they kill admirals from time to time to encourage the others.”

It’s that line that demonstrates the commonality between Crozier and Byng: they experienced how power and politics operated in bureaucratic circles. Byng experienced the early centralization of naval political power — ministers oversee naval affairs, not admirals at sea. Captain Crozier is now learning that lesson — one that is nothing new for the U.S. Navy.

In 2017, the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet experienced three open sea accidents in which ships collided with merchant vessels in an eight-month period. Investigations revealed readiness levels were at an all-time low with sailors putting in 100-hour-plus workweeks. Manning deficiencies — wholly a function of the Pentagon — led to these three accidents. Yet it was the admiral of the 7th Fleet who lost his job for failing to prevent these accidents, not a higher up.

When it comes to naval tradition, right and wrong and responsibility are far more about bureaucratic politics than reality. Though Crozier and Byng acted upon, in all appearances, what was right, it is technocracy and military bureaucrats, who determine such things, not front-line commanders.

Naval captains and admirals, since the age of Byng, have come to understand that commanding ships and fleets involves navigating internal politics. The more than two and a half centuries of bureaucratic maturation is not only institutionalized but rampant throughout the chain of command. The result is that expertise and creative solutions to unexpected high seas problems — such as the one Crozier faced in a pandemic outbreak aboard his ship — remain subservient to power structures at the highest level of military governance.