A Starfleet starship on which a young James T. Kirk served alongside Benjamin Finney, the man who later tried to ruin him.
The USS Republic was a Starfleet starship on which James T. Kirk served as a junior officer together with his friend Benjamin Finney. During their service, Kirk discovered that Finney had left a circuit open to the ship's atomic matter piles, a mistake that could have destroyed the ship, and he reported it.
Finney was reprimanded and fell to the bottom of the promotion list, and he blamed Kirk for the setback for years afterward. In Court Martial, his resentment led him to fake his own death aboard the Enterprise in an attempt to end Kirk's career.