At the Naval Academy, officers in training memorize “The Laws of the Navy,” a many-lined poem by a Victorian English admiral that prescribes teamwork, obedience, and prudence at all times. “Dost think, in a moment of anger, / ’Tis well with thy seniors to fight?” it scolds. “They prosper who burn in the morning / The letters they wrote overnight.” From training to retirement, there may be no more enduring truth for the military officer than this: Memos can kill careers.

Captain Brett Crozier, Annapolis class of ’92 and commander of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, didn’t care. Viruses are deadlier. Which was how, as the ship foundered dockside in Guam on Monday, Crozier wrote a three-and-a-half page letter, in dire prose blanketed by military memorandum format, begging the Navy’s and Pentagon’s senior leadership to save his crew of 4,000 from the coronavirus nightmare playing out on board.

Already, 100 sailors had tested positive for Covid-19, and the mighty warship had been ordered to quarantine in place. But, Crozier reminded his superiors, “None of the berthing onboard a warship is appropriate for quarantine or isolation.” The ship was becoming a cauldron of contagion. More sailors, Crozier warned, were testing negative, then showing obvious signs of the coronavirus illness days later.

“Decisive action is required,” the captain wrote. The crew, save for a few, needed to be evacuated to safe isolation. The ship could still fight, if duty required it, “but in combat we are willing to take certain risks that are not acceptable in peacetime,” Crozier wrote. “However, we are not at war, and therefore cannot allow a single Sailor to perish as a result of this pandemic unnecessarily.”

The letter—and its rapid release to the media—wasn’t quite mutinous, but it exposed a breakdown in the military chain of command, one that continues to cascade through the week. On Tuesday afternoon, acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly went on CNN and vowed that the Roosevelt crew would be evacuated, though the Navy was having trouble finding lodgings for its sailors. “We’re doing it in a very methodical way,” he said, “but we’re managing it, and we’re working through it.” But hours later, Modly’s boss, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, went on CBS Evening News and said no evacuation decision had yet been made. “Well, I have not had a chance to read [Crozier’s letter], read it in detail,” Esper said.