Unhappy ship

In naval tradition there are happy ships and unhappy ones. Happy ships have a strong tradition of sound leadership and good fortune that results in a sort of self-sustaining culture of professionalism. In short, sailors believe their ship is good and special—and they act accordingly.

By contrast, unhappy ships are ones where officers or crew screw up or suffer bad luck just often enough to create an expectation among sailors that such misfortune will continue. Novelist Patrick O’Brian described many unhappy ships in his famous series of naval adventures set in the Royal Navy in the early 19th century.

“The 30-gun Pomone was the unhappy ship whose captain was laid up in Funchal with a badly broken leg, unlikely to recover,” O’Brian writes in The Hundred Days, “and whose second lieutenant was confined to his cabin to await trial for an offense under the 29th Article of War, which dealt with ‘unnatural and detestable sin,’” a.k.a., sodomy.

Pomone’s fictional crew was “very upset,” O’Brian writes—and the novel’s hero, Commodore Jack Aubrey, is reluctant to include Pomone in his squadron.

Cowpens seems to share Pomone’s blight. In 2000, a sailor named Stewart McConnell “fell from the main mast and was killed when he struck a fender just aft of the mid-ship’s quarterdeck,” according to the vessel’s official history. “McConnell’s death greatly saddened the crew.”

Ten years later there was an eerily similar tragedy. Cowpens sailor Christopher John Perino tumbled from the cruiser’s bridge wing into a dry dock. The Navy investigated Perino’s death as a possible suicide.

The leadership troubles began five years ago. Capt. Holly Graf was the first woman to command Cowpens … or any Navy cruiser. But Graf was a tyrant who verbally abused her crew and even forced them to walk her dogs.

The Telegraph recalled some of the names Graf’s unhappy sailors called her behind her back. “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.”

Dozens of sailors complained. And in January 2010, the Navy finally intervened, firing Graf from command and effectively ending her career.

Capt. Robert Marin took over from Graf at Cowpens’ then-home port in Yokosuka, Japan. But two years later the Navy fired Marin, too, after discovering that the married skipper was sleeping with another officer’s wife.

The cruiser’s volatile commanding officers weren’t her only misfortune. On Dec. 5, 2013, Cowpens was in the Western Pacific, hot on the trail of China’s sole aircraft carrier Liaoning. Gombert was still well and in charge.

As is routine—and perfectly legal in international waters—the cruiser was sailing near Liaoning in order to assess the refurbished flattop’s capabilities. But the Chinese were having none of it. One of Liaoning’s escorts—an amphibious landing ship—violently maneuvered in front of Cowpens, cutting her off at a distance of just 200 yards and nearly causing a collision.

Gombert’s crew reacted expertly, turning to avoid the bullying vessel and promptly radioing to the Chinese crew. The subsequent conversation was “tense but professional,” a Pentagon official told The New York Times.