BATH (AP) – Le T. Phung was one of thousands of Vietnamese boat people desperate enough for a better life to take to the ocean in small boats. Many of them didn’t make it and for a time it looked like Phung might suffer the same fate.

Her boat had lost power and was adrift in the South China Sea. She and the other occupants had been battered by a typhoon. Now there was no food.

After a week at sea, she feared that the wooden boat with 125 people packed tightly aboard would sink. Then aircraft flew over and a U.S. Navy ship appeared on the horizon. Hours later, she and the others were clambering up a net aboard the USS Sterett.

Phung, now a molecular biologist at the University of Illinois, joined two descendants of Lt. Andrew Sterett at Saturday’s christening of the latest Navy warship to bear the Sterett name: a 510-foot destroyer being built at Bath Iron Works.

“I became emotional listening to the National Anthem,” Phung said afterward. “It’s a very special occasion for me.”

The Sterett, christened with a splash of champagne by Michelle Sterett Bernson, is the fourth warship to bear the name of Sterett, who served aboard the frigate Constellation during the U.S. Navy’s first victory against a foreign navy.

Outside the shipyard, more than 40 peace activists held a demonstration.

There were no arrests, according to Bath police.

Sterett commanded a gun battery when Constellation captured the French frigate L’Insurgente during an undeclared “quasi-war” in February 1799.

During the battle, Sterett used his cutlass to execute a sailor who abandoned his post, and he later boasted, “We put men to death for even looking pale on this ship.” Sterett later commanded the first Enterprise and captured the French privateer L’Amour de la Patrie.

Among those in attendance Saturday were more than 80 sailors, including eight World War II veterans, who’d served on previous Steretts.

The first Navy warship to bear the Sterett name served in World War I. The second was highly decorated for action in the Pacific in World War II. The third was the one that picked up Phung and others in July 22, 1983.

Phung said she was in her 20s when she learned of an opportunity to flee the country, which had fallen into Communist hands in 1975.

“I was told if I wanted to leave, I should try my luck,” Phung said. “It happened just like that. You don’t have a plan. You don’t have an itinerary.”

Once aboard the cramped boat, she soon realized no one knew where they were headed. The engine died within a day and the boat drifted. Bad weather struck. Phung recalled losing her raincoat and huddling under sheets of rain in a corner of the boat, throwing up as it was tossed by the waves.

Later, a passing fishing boat gave the hungry refugees fish and noodles. “I was quite lucky someone gave me a raw yam to take along. We split it among 15 people,” she said.

The boat had been adrift for a week and the food was gone by the time the USS Sterett came along on patrol. Phung had been sure she was going to die.

Retired Navy Capt. George Sullivan, who was the Sterett’s skipper at the time, said Phung’s boat was one of several picked up by the USS Sterett. His sailors were directed to take on refugees if their boats were deemed to be in trouble.

“You couldn’t leave them there,” Sullivan said. “You had to take them aboard. That’s the law of the sea, and the Navy follows that routinely.”

Michelle Sterett Bernson, a Boeing engineer from Seattle, served as ship’s sponsor during Saturday’s ceremony, breaking a bottle champagne on the ship’s bow. Her mother, Diana Sterett, was honored as a matron of honor.

The two of them had met Phung through the USS Sterett Association. Together, they decided to ask that Phung be allowed to serve as a matron of honor as well. “We both thought it would be great to have her engaged in it,” Bernson said.

Phung happily accepted.

She owes a lot to the previous Sterett. Since being rescued, she has pursued her dreams in America. She earned a doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1997. She’s currently doing research for the University of Illinois College of Medicine.

“It changed my life. It was the turning point for me,” Phung said. “Without the Sterett, there wouldn’t be me today.”

AP-ES-05-19-07 1357EDT

Copy the Story Link