Hello, Ric here with a bit of a different Starship legacy video. Rather than this time
picking a single name with a long and storied history, I thought it would be cool idea to
pick a concept and look to vessels named in that theme.
Beginning with that which Starfleet was founded for, exploration! As that can be rather a
wide net, I think I’m going to include the fields of astronomy as well as Earthly explorers
when looking for names of these vessels. There are probably going to be vessels named for
explorers which I miss and that number is going to grow a lot if you included beta content.
So, we’re starting with one of Janeway’s old vessels, the USS Al-Battani NCC-42995.
The vessel was an Excelsior class that Ensign Kathryn Janeway served on as junior science
officer straight out of the academy. At was under the command of Captain Paris, for a
time and it served on several more expeditions long after the Captain became and Admiral
and instead manned a desk in San Francisco. It reportedly survived the Dominion War and
was named after the Arabic astronomer who is regarded as the “Ptolemy of Arabs”
during the 9th and 10th centuries. In the mid 23rd century there was a USS Aryabhatta,
a vessel which Christopher Pike served on for a time before his transfer to the USS
Enterprise. This vessel was named for the Indian astronomer and mathematician of the
6th century. However, the name itself was a misspelling of Aryabhata, what cheek, you’d
never catch my misspelling anything. There was an SS Beagle which was a Federation,
not Starfleet vessel named after the HMS Beagle that took Charles Darwin to explore the South
American coastline and study the wildlife of the Galapagos islands, leading to the progression
of our understanding of natural selection and over the long term, evolution.
In the year 2390, the USS Ibn-Majid NCC-75710 encountered a race of android but was directed
by Commodore Oh of Starfleet security to destroy the vessel and its occupants as part of a
long-term Romulan operation to stamp out development of such synthetic life. The vessel then had
its exploits classified and crews reassigned. The vessel’s name comes from Ahmad Ibn Majid,
an Arab navigator and cartographer of the 15th century. Supposedly all the vessels of
the Curiosity class were named after such explorers, or exploration adjacent people
from all across Earth’s history. Speaking of the 2390s, the end of the decade
brought the Inquiry-Class and its USS Zheng He. This vessel seems to have been rapidly
mass produced by Starfleet from some shipyard other than Utopia Planitia, which was out
of commission at the time. Supposedly one of the most contemporarily advanced ships
in the fleet, the Zheng He was named for the historical Chinese admiral, Zheng He who spent
some time commanding fleet expeditions between 1405 to 1433. This resulted in the publication
of lots of rather useful navigational charts. David Livingstone was a Victorian Scottish
explorer who made great delves into the heart of Africa and a prominent figure in several
other circles. He was a staunch opposer of the slave trade and desired to gain as much
influence as possible in the hopes of ending the East African and Arab slave trade.
There was a USS Livingston NCC-34099 and it was an Excelsior class on which Kyle Riker,
William Riker’s father served in 2355. This vessel, like many excelsiors was wrung for
every year it could give and was still in operation in the 2370s but seems to be named
after a different person. Nevertheless on the off-chance it’s not, I’m adding it
here. The USS Magellan NCC-71820 was a galaxy class
that fought in the Dominion War making up part of one of the Galaxy wings in the battle
of Operation Return. During this period of turmoil, it seems to have returned often to
Starfleet exploration and been the vessel responsible for first contact with the Evora
in 2372. There was also the NCC-3069, nice, it’s named after Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese
explorer who took an expedition into the East Indies in the early 16th century. Although
he died in 1521, the first circumnavigation of the Earth was completed by Juan Sebastian
Elcano when he took command to complete the trip.
Speaking of going around the entire planet, Englishman Sir Francis Drake in 1580 became
the first explorer to successfully complete the feat in a single expedition, whereas Magellan
and Elcano had made the odyssey in several trips and both been in command, Drake did
it in one. As with others on this list, there have been several USS Drake ships. In 2364,
Commander Riker was offered command of the USS Drake NCC-20381, a Wambundu-class (which
looked like a little chibi-Galaxy class). Again, there are a myriad of other vessels
named USS Drake, enough to do its own legacy video on in the future.
Next up we have the USS Copernicus NCC-640, named after the polish astronomer and mathematician.
This guy famously (or infamously at the time) worked out that the Sun was at the centre
of the solar system, not the Earth. This was published in the Revolutions of Celestial
Spheres and a major component in shaping future scientific understanding. There have been
several vessels of this name from different eras but both being Oberth-class, the NCC-640
of the late 23rd century, and the NCC-58637 of TNG era.
Next up, we have several vessels to bear the name Armstrong, named of course for Neil Armstrong,
the first man to set foot on the moon. There was an Oberth-class around in 2369 but this
didn’t last into the 70s as the next USS Armstrong (NCC-57537) was a challenger class.
2372 saw this vessel take a beating alongside the USS Drake during the brief Klingon-Federation
war, but it survived its encounter. There have been several vessels to bear the
name Gagarin, both as the USS Gagarin and the USS Yuri Gagarin. These are named after
the first man in space, Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin in 1961. The vessels were the
USS Gagarin NCC-1309 of the mid 23rd century, a vessel which took part in the Klingon War
and was lost in 2256 with all hands after a Klingon attack on it and fellow vessels,
the USS Hoover and Muroc. Then there was the NCC-25306 in the 24th century which was assigned
to patrol the neutral zone and memory beta has like, at least 7 other vessels with this
name. The Shepard-class, was named after Alan Shepard,
the first American astronaut in space in 1961 one of which was the aforementioned USS Gagarin.
In 2286, the USS Shepard, probably the first of its class was near Earth when the whale
probe approached and began to shut down vessels. This caused a viral outbreak from its med
lab and resulted in the deaths of 15 crewmen. Clyde Tombaugh was an American astronomer
who discovered Pluto, and by proxy therefore the Kuiper belt. The USS Tombaugh NCC-3853
was a Ptolemy-class which were usually considered workhorse and cargo vessels. It was active
during the early to mid 23rd century. A more modern name is the USS Helin, named
after the American NASA astronomer of the 20th century. As many explored the globe,
she had been mapping near-Earth objects and discovered several asteroids, planetoids and
comets. Over her life she located or worked on discovering 903 objects. The USS Helin
NCC-1962 was active in 2293 and keeping an eye on the neutral zone of the Federation-Klingon
boarder during the events of the “Undiscovered Country”.
As I said, there are probably some that I missed in canon, and undoubtedly many more
in extra-canonical sources that I haven’t even mentioned so if you can think of them
let me know. In a similar theme to this one, I intend to take a look into Starfleet vessels
simply with alien names. After all, the UFP is supposed to be an interstellar organisation
so why are there so many ships with Earth names? Thanks for watching this video, until
the next one, I’ve been Ric. Thanks again for watching and I’ll see you next time
for another lore, discussion or gaming video. Goodbye!