A U.S. Navy ship will be named after Robert Smalls. (Brady-Handy photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)
YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — A U.S. Navy ship originally named for a Confederate victory will soon be known by the name of a former slave who hijacked a Confederate vessel.
The USS Chancellorsville, named for an 1863 battle in Virginia remembered as a major victory for Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, will be renamed for Robert Smalls, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro announced Tuesday in a news release.
Smalls, born into slavery in South Carolina in 1839, was conscripted into the Confederate States Navy in 1862 to serve as a pilot for the Planter, an ammunitions transport ship, according to his biography on the U.S. House of Representatives’ website. He rose to fame that year when he hijacked the ship and turned it over to the Union Navy.
He went on to pilot the Planter and another ship, the ironclad Keokuk, on behalf of the Union in numerous battles. Later, Smalls accepted a commission as brigadier general of his home state before being elected as a South Carolina state representative from 1870 to 1874.
Between 1875 and 1887, Smalls represented South Carolina for five terms in the House of Representatives, then returned to local government in Beaufort, S.C., before dying of natural causes in 1915, according to his biography.
The USS Chancellorsville, seen here at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, will be renamed later this year. (Jennessa Davey/Stars and Stripes)
The USS Chancellorsville, seen here at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, will be renamed later this year. (Jennessa Davey/Stars and Stripes)
“Robert Smalls is a man who deserves a namesake ship and with this renaming, his story will continue to be retold and highlighted,” Del Toro said the release.
The Chancellorsville, which was at its homeport in Yokosuka on Tuesday, is one of two Navy vessels set to be renamed this year due to their Confederate ties; the oceanographic survey ship USNS Maury is the other, following a 2021 Congressional mandate.
“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,” Del Toro said in the release.
It will not be the first military vessel named after Smalls. The logistics support vessel Major General Robert Smalls, which was inducted into the Army’s watercraft fleet in 2007, was the first Army vessel named for an African American.
The Navy did not identify a date for unveiling the USS Robert Smalls, but assets under the congressional mandate have until the end of 2023 to be renamed, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in September.
