Yesterday, the Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro announced that the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser formerly named USS Chancellorsville (CG 62) will be renamed USS Robert Smalls.
Earlier this month, we posted Remembering Robert Smalls – Former Slave, Pilot of the Planter, First Black Captain in the US Navy & US Congressman. On May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, a 23-year-old slave, who served as the pilot of the Confederate armed transport, CSS Planter, led eight fellow slaves in an audacious flight to freedom. They seized the CSS Planter, steamed it out past the batteries and forts of Charleston harbor, and turned it over to the Union naval blockade. Smalls would go on to become the first black captain of a US Navy vessel, a South Carolina State Legislator, a Major General in the South Carolina Militia, a five-term U.S. Congressman, and a U.S. Collector of Customs.
“I am proud to rename CG 62 after Robert Smalls. He was an extraordinary American and I had the pleasure of learning more about him last year when I visited his home in South Carolina,” said Del Toro. “The renaming of these assets is not about rewriting history, but to remove the focus on the parts of our history that don’t align with the tenets of this country, and instead allows us to highlight the events and people in history who may have been overlooked. Robert Smalls is a man who deserves a namesake ship and with this renaming, his story will continue to be retold and highlighted.”
Commissioned in 1989, the guided-missile cruiser was originally named after the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, considered to be the greatest victory of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
With the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 in January 2021, The Naming Commission has been tasked by Congress to develop plans to “remove all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America from all assets of the Department of Defense.”
The ship is the second vessel named in honor of Smalls. In 2007, the logistics support vessel Major General Robert Smalls (LSV-8) was also named in his honor.