On August 26, 1843, the Missouri, the U.S. Navy’s most modern warship, was en route to China carrying Caleb Cushing, who had been sent by President John Tyler to negotiate America’s first commercial treaty with the Chinese. While stopped at the Rock of Gibraltar, the frigate caught fire and burned despite the best efforts of her crew and sailors of the British Royal Navy to save her.
Over one hundred years later, on September 2, 1945, representatives of the Japanese Empire climbed aboard the most modern and powerful battleship in the U.S. Navy—another Missouri—to surrender unconditionally to the Allies at the end of World War II.
In June 1998, Missouri returned to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to become a historic monument, and one month later, the newest and most powerful aircraft carrier in the world—Harry S. Truman—joined the navy.
Although the state of Missouri is hundreds of miles from an ocean, ships with Missouri names and connections have served the United States since the earliest days of Missouri statehood. Six years after Missouri joined the Union in 1821, work began in the Washington Navy Yard on a sloop of war that would be christened St. Louis, and in all, six ships have been named for the “Gateway City,” including a cruiser that survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and, with her great sister Missouri, helped defeat the Japanese in the Pacific Ocean. The first Missouri was the first oceangoing steam frigate in the U.S. Navy, and the fourth, and last, Missouri was also the last—and most famous—American battleship of them all. As technological advances changed naval warfare, nuclear submarines began to patrol the seas. One was christened Jefferson City; another was named for one of Missouri’s legendary sons, Daniel Boone. At the end of the twentieth century, a nuclear aircraft carrier named for President Harry S. Truman carried a crew of five thousand, and in the Middle East, a ship named for a young Missouri hero, Cole, was struck by anti-American terrorists.
From sailing ships, to Civil War ironclads, to the most powerful battleships, submarines, and aircraft carriers of the modern navy, over a century and a half of American naval history can be told through the story of vessels carrying names of Missouri heroes and Missouri places. This is the history of these ships and of their diplomatic and military service to the United States.