BIW christens destroyer named for R.I. senator Chafee family dedicates 1st ship from new facility

BATH – The Navy’s newest destroyer bearing the name of the late Rhode Island Sen. John Chafee was christened Monday with champagne and fireworks as his wife and four of their children observed the Veterans Day ceremony.

“In loving memory we christen the USS Chafee. May God bless all who serve on her,” Virginia Chafee said, before she and Diane Blair, wife of retired Adm. Dennis Blair, each smashed a bottle of champagne against the ship’s metal hull.

Then fireworks filled the evening sky as Bath Iron Works made history with the first warship to be built at a $240 million land-level transfer facility designed to make the Navy shipbuilder more efficient.

Because of the modernization, the Chafee was the first Bath-built ship that did not go into the Kennebec River with a splash. Instead, it was transferred into a dry dock and floated a week before the ceremony.

Chafee’s oldest son, Zechariah Chafee, said his father, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War and a former Navy secretary, would have appreciated the honor of having a warship bearing his name.

He said his father believed in President Theodore Roosevelt’s precept of “speak softly and carry a big stick.”

“John Chafee answered the call in our nation’s struggles with aggressive tyranny. From those days and deeds, he well understood that only a nation armed and ready will be heard and heeded,” Zechariah Chafee told the hundreds of spectators. “A big stick speaks louder than noisy words.”

Virginia Sen. John Warner echoed the theme. “He always spoke softly. Rarely did he ever raise his voice,” he said.

Warner and Maine Sen. Susan Collins both counted Chafee as one of their best friends. Warner met Chafee when the two served at the Pentagon, and Collins met him in the Senate.

When Chafee died in 1999, he was known as a moderate Republican and champion of the environment after a quarter-century in the Senate.

But long before he began his political career, he was a Marine who saw combat on Guadalcanal and Okinawa in World War II. Later, he led a rifle company in snow-capped mountains during the Korean War.

After World War II, Chafee went back to Yale and finished up before attending Harvard Law School. But he found his calling in politics, not in the courtroom. He served in the state legislature and was elected to three terms as governor. He also served as Navy secretary from 1969-72 before being elected to the Senate.

Warner served under Chafee as undersecretary of the Navy before becoming secretary himself. The two later served together in the Senate. Warner will chair the Armed Services Committee in the next Senate.

Zechariah Chafee and his brother Sen. Lincoln Chafee said their father’s military career was overshadowed by his achievements in the Senate. Joining them at the ceremony were two other siblings: Quentin Chafee and Georgia Nassikas. Another brother who lives in California was unable to make the trip.

“Curiously, many of his colleagues in the Senate did not realize his military service and his record. As is so often the case with soldiers, they downplay their actions in war,” Lincoln Chafee said before the ceremony.

Zechariah Chafee said his father did tell the story of leading a patrol across a snow-covered field with land mines in Korea.

His father liked to joke that there was only one set of footprints in the snow as the Marines followed single file behind him. All of the Marines made it out of the minefield safely, his son added.

The USS Chafee is 510 feet long and will weigh more than 8,000 tons when fully loaded and delivered to the Navy.

The $1 billion Arleigh Burke-class destroyer is built to withstand chemical attacks while advanced radar enable it to wage battle simultaneously with enemy airplanes, warships and submarines.