There are ships that fight in battles, their names carved into the bright lights of history, remembered for decisive cannon fire or desperate torpedo runs. And then there are ships whose purpose was never to fight at all, but to disappear into the world’s oceans, waiting in silence with the power to end civilization. The USS Henry L. Stimson (SSBN-655) belonged to that second group. She was one of the “41 for Freedom,” America’s fleet of nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines that patrolled the oceans through the Cold War, holding the line by being invisible. Her story is not one of thundering combat but of quiet endurance, of young men living under the sea for months at a time, and of the statesman whose name she bore, a man who wrestled with the morality of nuclear weapons before most of her crew were even born.

The story of the USS Von Steuben begins, fittingly, with a name from the Revolutionary War. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (born September 17, 1730), was the Prussian officer who made Washington’s ragged army into something resembling a fighting force. It was his drill manual, delivered in blunt and precise language, that gave Americans discipline when they needed it most. Two centuries later, another Von Steuben was commissioned into service, this one made of steel and reactor power, carrying sixteen ballistic missiles rather than a musket and bayonet. Her purpose was no less vital. She was built to keep the peace by being invisible, silent, and ready to deliver destruction if the order ever came.