A bitterly cold wind was blowing up Narragansett Bay off the North Atlantic on Saturday, April 20, 1968. I had boarded an Eastern Airlines flight from Baltimore to Providence, Rhode Island, earlier that morning in order to attend Officer Candidate School (OCS) at the Newport Naval Base. Disembarking from a cab at the entrance gate, I asked a passing Warrant Officer where I was expected to report. He barked at me, “Don’t you know how to say “Sir,” cadet?”

I had worked well past 9 p.m. the night before. Hired upon graduation as a management intern with AT&T, I was Test Center Supervisor at the Dupont switching office in Washington, D.C. Sixty of our 84,000 telephone customers had lost their dial tone in the aftermath of the fires and riots following Martin Luther King’s April 4 assassination. I had grown accustomed to people yelling at me. Rough discipline is common at all military boot camps, but the Navy’s regimen has a distinctive flavor rooted in a thousand years of maritime law.

Mutiny is originally a naval term. Chief Quinn, our seamanship instructor at OCS advised us, “If you decide to rock the boat, don’t do it to watch the waves. You best flip the damned thing over!” Once underway, a ship’s captain rules as king. There is no room for conflicting opinions. This is why ship captains can legally perform marriages. Once at sea, absolute authority resides with the skipper. Navy regulations also incorporate the notion of “crimes of command.” A captain carries responsibility for anything that goes haywire, even if he or she is absent from the ship.

Selecting subordinates who will not make careless mistakes is an important piece of a captain’s accountability. A ship’s crew operates as a team, more so than any other military service. It’s a principle you learn during those long weeks of abusive training. All of which brings us to the disgraceful dismissal of Captain Brett Crozier as the commanding officer (CO) of the nuclear carrier Theodore Roosevelt. His was the premier operational assignment for a career Naval officer – a capstone to an unblemished career. There are just 11 aircraft carriers, and their COs are the Navy’s superstars – on a fast track to admiral rank.

Charged with protecting the lives and welfare of 5,000 sailors, every waking minute requires keen intelligence, constant attention and compassionate leadership. When Crozier chose to place the welfare of the Roosevelt’s crew ahead of his own career, he knew full well what was going to happen. He is far too smart to have thought his letter would be welcomed. Time is almost sure to show his previous appeals were either rejected or ignored. Captain Crozier is the kind of commanding officer I would be proud to serve with.

The weakness of Navy discipline is the frequently far too easy path of scurrying to cover your ass. Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly told a friend the day before he sacked Captain Crozier, “Breaking news: Trump wants him fired.” It’s incomprehensible within the current White House that anyone would place his or her sworn duty ahead of his or her personal lust for advancement. So alien is a sense of sworn honor that would prompt an officer to throw himself on his sword for the welfare of his crew that the sacrifice was seen as a deliberate embarrassment.

There is substantial irony in the recent essay from Tweed Roosevelt, Teddy’s grandson, describing the “round robin” letter the future president distributed to newsrooms across the country demanding American troops, including his own Rough Riders, be brought home immediately before yellow fever and malaria further decimated their ranks in Cuba. His grandson observes, “In this era when so many seem to place expediency over honor, it is heartening that so many others are showing great courage … Theodore Roosevelt, in his time, chose the honorable course. Captain Crozier has done the same.”

There is no shame in Captain Crozier’s firing. He will take to his grave the tumultuous cheers of the crew as he walked off the Roosevelt. Those who buckled under pressure to dismiss Crozier from the president must carry their shame with them for the remainder of their lives. The charge that Crozier needlessly alarmed his sailors and their families is utter nonsense. They all knew what was happening aboard the carrier. They had cell phones and internet access.

It is the depraved toadies, like Modly, who are the genuine incompetents in this story – more concerned about “looking bad in Washington” than safeguarding the enlisted men and women under his charge. It was immensely gratifying to see that groveling couldn’t save Modly from poor poll numbers. Good riddance.

A new president need not search far to find a chief of naval operations who would quickly restore fleet morale.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former legislator. He can be reached at mnhwriter@msn.com.