Lesbian Navy Captain Faces Court Martial After $100M Ship Ran Aground, Caught Fire, Sank

LINK

The HMNZS Manawanu cost $100 million to build and was commissioned in 2018 as a survey and dive vessel.

Commander Yvonne Gray, a Brit who moved to New Zealand in 2012, joined the New Zealand Navy after a vacation with her lesbian partner. She had previously served with the British Navy since 1993.

Gray has now been charged with negligence, along with two of her former officers, and will face court martial.

The charges were certified for trial and laid on Monday, and while pleas have not been entered Commander Gray has indicated through her lawyers that she will fight the allegations, The New Zealand Herald reported.

... Commander Gray faces a charge of negligently permitting a ship to be lost by allegedly being absent from the bridge while within one nautical mile of a reef, with an alternative charge of failing to perform a duty for the same alleged conduct.

She faces a separate charge alleging she failed to ensure an appropriate plan was in place while the ship was in uncharted waters.

The defense minister of New Zealand, Judith Collins, had originally praised Gray for evacuating everyone from the sinking wreck and had called critics "misogynistic" if they thought the lesbian captain might be at fault.

The fact that she's a lesbian wouldn't have mattered as much if the woke officials at the New Zealand Defense Force hadn't run a glowing article praising her for being a woman and a lesbian in an attempt to show how inclusive they are.

Such practices have made the wider public wonder if people are being put in charge of warships because they are competent and qualified, or because they check a certain box!

Lieutenant Commander Gajzago, who was command supervisor on the bridge, also faces a charge of negligently causing a ship to be lost by allegedly failing to supervise the third officer and prevent the ship from running aground.

The third officer, who was officer of the watch at the time of the crash, is facing the same charge for allegedly turning the vessel towards a reef half a nautical mile ahead while travelling at more than four knots, and failing to disengage autopilot and take manual control quickly enough to avoid the reef.

Essentially, the crew forgot that the ship was still in autopilot and then forgot to disengage the autopilot while trying to figure out what was going on with the vessel's thrusters.

In November, Chief of Navy Rear Admiral Garin Golding said this:

The crew did not realise Manawanui remained in autopilot and, as a consequence, mistakenly believed its failure to respond to direction changes was the result of a thruster control failure.

Having mistakenly assessed a thruster control failure, standard procedures should have prompted ship's crew to check that the ship was under manual control rather than in autopilot. This check did not occur.

Remaining in autopilot resulted in the ship maintaining a course toward land, until grounding and eventually stranding.

I hate it when that happens!

New Zealand's government had to shell out just under $4 million USD to Samoa for the environmental damage.

This was New Zealand's first naval loss since World War 2.

...