A gray behemoth capable of fueling three warships at once slid into San Diego Bay on Saturday during a christening ceremony in which Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said such vessels are badly needed during a time of rising military tensions worldwide.
The USNS Lucy Stone — which bears the name of an influential 18th-century women’s rights advocate — became the latest in a new class of fuel ships to be built and launched by General Dynamics-NASSCO.
All of the so-called John Lewis-class vessels are named after prominent civil rights figures.
Saturday’s launch came three days after the Navy publicly released a plan to prepare the fleet for a potential war with China in three years. Such a conflict would likely involve large numbers of warships from San Diego, the largest Navy installation on the West Coast. Third Fleet regularly sends local ships on deployment to the South China Sea.
The Navy is dealing with many problems, including a personnel shortage that’s so severe that it is considering sidelining 17 auxiliary ships. Del Toro alluded to the shortage twice while addressing several hundred visitors at NASSCO.
Destroyers and aircraft carriers typically bring the most publicity to the Navy. But Del Toro lauded ships like the Lucy Stone, a 742-foot oiler that can carry about 7 million gallons of fuel and lots of dry goods.
“When our sailors and Marines take our warships into combat, our Military Sealift Command merchant mariners are right there bringing the beans, the bullets and the black oil they need to stay out to sea until the end of the conflict,” said Del Toro, who spoke while a two-person sniper security team watched from a nearby tower.
The Military Sealift Command is a division of the Navy. Its ships are operated by civilian crews.
Del Toro also had praise for Stone, who promoted women’s rights and fought against slavery during a period of U.S. history when such advocacy was largely unwelcome.
She immersed herself in the anti-slavery movement shortly after graduating from Ohio’s Oberlin College in 1847, where she became the first Massachusetts woman to earn a bachelor’s degree anywhere in the nation. Before long, she also was advocating for the interests of women, trying to bring them out of the shadow of men.
In an act that was unusual then but is common today, Stone refused to take her husband’s name when they got married in 1855.
“A wife should no more take her husband’s name than he should hers,” Stone said at the time. “My name is my identity and must not be lost. I believe that the influence of (a) woman will save the country before every other power.”
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In 1869 she co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association, which pushed for women to be given the right to vote. That did not occur during her life; she died in 1893. But historians say that her efforts helped lay the foundation for women being give that right in 1920.
“The enduring legacy of Lucy Stone as a trailblazer in the women’s rights movement remains an indelible source of inspiration,” said Del Toro.
Earlier in the week, Del Toro announced that an upcoming fuel ship to be built at NASSCO will be named after Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers Association, a union that improved the wages and working conditions of migrant farmworkers.
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