She was the first and only woman to be selected to command a US navy guided-missile cruiser. Now she faces an ignominious end to her fast-track career after being accused of creating a “Captain Bligh” environment of fear and hostility on board her ship.

Captain Holly Graf, 46, who has been relieved of her command of USS Cowpens, based at Yokosuka in Japan, is waiting to hear whether she is to be summoned before her superiors “to show cause” why she should not be thrown out of the navy. A spokesman said yesterday that senior officers were still considering whether to call her before a special hearing, a move that could spell the end of her career.

The stories of her alleged breaches of US navy regulations are legion. Captain Graf has been accused of resorting to profanities when dressing down subordinates, hurling coffee cups, assaulting a crew member by grabbing him around the throat, spitting in another’s face and abusing her position by ordering junior ranks to walk her dog and entertain her at a private party.

The Navy Inspector General’s report on Captain Graf, after a long investigation, substantiated allegations that she verbally abused subordinates by publicly berating and belittling them in violation of US navy regulations articles 802 and 1023. On one occasion, turning to a member of the watch team on the bridge, Captain Graf is alleged to have shouted: “What are you, f****** stupid?”

Navy regulations stipulate that someone in authority is forbidden to abuse subordinates by “tyrannical conduct or by abusive language”.

When she was relieved of her command, the blogging world was filled with vitriolic references to her leadership. The epithets included “foul-mouthed martinet”, “raging tyrant”, “screamer” and “a female Captain Bligh”. There are also tales of her alleged abusive conduct from previous appointments before she was elevated to commanding officer of the Cowpens and its 400 crew in March 2008.

According to Time magazine, in 2003 when serving on USS Winston S. Churchill, a destroyer, she grabbed the navigator and shouted at him: “Did you run my f****** ship aground?” The warship shuddered as it left a Sicilian port but it turned out one of the propellers had broken. The navigator was a Royal Navy officer on secondment. The crew hoped that they had run aground, expecting that it would damage the career of Captain Graf, then a commander. Sailors are said to have cried out: “Ding dong, the witch is dead!”

The internal report on Captain Graf — and the prospect of her appearance before her superiors to plead for her career — has been deeply embarrassing for the US Navy which has made much of the equality of opportunity for women. There are now 12 women in command of other types of US warships, including destroyers and frigates (the Royal Navy has not yet promoted a woman to command such prestigious vessels). Out of the 329,900 personnel in the US Navy, 50,000 are women. The case is doubly embarrassing because of Captain Graf’s background. Her father was a navy captain and her sister, Robin, is a rear-admiral in Navy Recruiting Command. Captain Graf was seen as a poster girl for the navy’s integration of women and men in America’s warship fleet, and there must have been those who saw her as an admiral of the future.

For the moment, she is languishing in a non-command post at the US Navy Air and Missile Defence Command in Virginia, awaiting her fate.