[imagesource:nzherald/facebook]

New Zealand’s defence minister has chastised “armchair admirals” for claiming that a female captain’s gender was to blame for the sinking of one of the country’s navy ships.

HMNZS Manawanui ran aground one nautical mile from the Samoan island of Upolu on Saturday night while surveying a reef. It later caught fire and capsized.

Officials are investigating the cause of the incident, but it did not take long for online idiots to take shots at Commander Yvonne Gray, a woman, as the cause of the incident.

New Zealand’s defence minister, also a woman, came to Cdr Gray’s defence, saying “A court of inquiry has been stood up to establish what caused this terrible incident.”

Collins said she was appalled to see online trolling from “people who will never have to make decisions which mean life or death for their subordinates”.

“The one thing that we already know did not cause it is the gender of the ship’s captain.”

Despite taunts from the lesser-evolved netizens of the internet, Cdr Gray ensured all 75 people on board were evacuated onto lifeboats and rescued during the incident, which she called her “very worst imagining”.

But Cdr Gray added that the crew had responded to the emergency “exactly the way I needed them to” and “acted with commitment, with comradeship and, above all, with courage”.

“I thought seriously in 2024 what the hell is going on here with people who are sitting there in their armchair operating a keyboard making comments about people that they do not know, about an area they do not know and they are just vile. Where’s a bit of decency.”

Military authorities in New Zealand have stated that the investigation into the disaster would look at the chronology of events leading up to it, as well as the reason for the grounding and sinking. It is the first ship New Zealand’s Navy has lost to the sea since World War Two.

New Zealand has a long history of gender equality, being the first country to offer women the right to vote. However, the country’s most recent female prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, also faced repeated sexist abuse while in office. Despite this, she still did a good job during a weird time.

Grey, on the other hand, commanded a navy ship through a life-threatening emergency, and her entire crew escaped unharmed. She sounds like twice the man any of the armchair admirals are.

[source:bbc]