Four ships in the United States Navy have been named USS Rowan after Stephen Clegg Rowan.
The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most capable navy in the world and it has been estimated that in terms of tonnage of its active battle fleet alone, it is larger than the next 13 navies combined, which includes 11 U.S. allies or partner nations. with the highest combined battle fleet tonnage and the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, with eleven in service, and two new carriers under construction. With 319,421 personnel on active duty and 99,616 in the Ready Reserve, the Navy is the third largest of the service branches. It has 282 deployable combat vessels and more than 3,700 operational aircraft as of March 2018, making it the second-largest air force in the world, after the United States Air Force.
Stephen Clegg Rowan was a Vice Admiral in the United States Navy, who served during the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War.
- The first USS Rowan (TB-8) was a torpedo boat, commissioned in 1899 and decommissioned in 1912.
- The second USS Rowan (DD-64) was a Sampson-class destroyer, commissioned in 1916, served in World War I and decommissioned in 1922.
- The third USS Rowan (DD-405) was a Benham-class destroyer, commissioned in 1939, served in World War II and sunk by enemy action in September 1943.
- The fourth USS Rowan (DD-782) was a Gearing-class destroyer, commissioned in 1945, decommissioned in 1975 and transferred to Taiwan, but sank while under tow in 1977.
The first USS Rowan was a torpedo boat in the United States Navy during the Spanish–American War. She was named for Vice Admiral Stephen Rowan.
A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs rammed enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes, and later designs launched self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes. They were created to counter battleships and other slow and heavily armed ships by using speed, agility, and the power of their torpedo weapons. A number of inexpensive torpedo boats attacking en masse could overwhelm a larger ship's ability to fight them off using its large but cumbersome guns. An inexpensive fleet of torpedo boats could pose a threat to much larger and more expensive fleets of capital ships, albeit only in the coastal areas to which their small size and limited fuel load restricted them.
USS Rowan (DD-64) was a Sampson-class destroyer of the United States Navy. She was the second Navy ship named for Vice Admiral Stephen C. Rowan (1805–1890).
  | This article includes a list of ships with the same or similar names. If an internal link for a specific ship led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended ship article, if one exists. |
