The ghost captain
There was a rare, maddening way for a round to start: you'd pick a warship, spawn onto the bridge… and the ship would ignore you. Throttle rung to flank, sea dead flat under the bow, every key you pressed doing nothing. A captain with no ship. That ghost is exorcised — the moment you spawn, the helm is yours.
The helm that wouldn't answer
When it hit, it hit total. You'd take a destroyer, hold ahead, and go nowhere. The conning panel never came up. The shell-swap key did nothing. You could see the enemy line and the sea and your own bow, and you could not steer a metre of it. The only recourse was to quit and rejoin — and most captains just quit.
It was rare, and it looked for all the world like your ship had run aground in some island pocket. It hadn't. You were berthed in clean, open water with room to manoeuvre in every direction. The ship was ready to sail. The link between your seat and the ship simply never got made — so the war carried on around a bridge nobody was standing on.
Your seat is yours the instant you spawn
Now the handshake that puts you aboard carries your seat with it — hull, gun emplacement, or bomber turret. Whichever station the round drops you into is wired to your keys before the sea finishes fading in. There is no gap left for the ship to forget who its captain is.
You will never see the ghost captain, and that's the whole point. It was the kind of failure that left no wreck and no warning — just a player who spawned, got ignored, and left. Those rounds are over. Pick a warship, and it sails the moment you do.