Vintage US NAVY SUBMARINE Brass Plaque – USS WILLIAM H BATES SSN 680. This plaque is in good condition with some minor wear and fading from age. Bates, a Sturgeon-class attack submarine, was planned to be the second U. However, upon the 22 June 1969 death of William H. Representative from Massachusetts’s 6th Congressional District known for his staunch support of nuclear propulsion in the U. Navy, she was renamed William H. Navy to have borne the name. The reason for her naming by then-Secretary of the Navy John Chafee, breaking with a long-standing Navy tradition of naming U. Navy attack submarines for sea creatures, was best summed up by Admiral Hyman Rickover, the then-director of the Navy’s nuclear reactors program, with the pithy comment that, Fish don’t vote!