Ships
- USS Bullard (DD-660) Captain from 16 June 1945
Eigel Thornton Steen was a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy. On 16 June 1945 he became commanding officer of the destroyer Bullard (DD-660). She was a Fletcher-class ship, built at the Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Kearny, New Jersey, launched on 28 February 1943, and commissioned on 9 April 1943. The Navy named her for Rear Admiral William H. G. Bullard.
Bullard had already served through the hard years of the Pacific war before Steen came aboard. After a short time on the East Coast and in the Caribbean, she arrived at Pearl Harbor on 29 August 1943. Aside from one return to California, from 10 September 1944 to 18 February 1945, she stayed in forward waters, used for gunfire support, plane-guard duty, patrol, and radar picket. Glenn Roy Hartwig, who later became a rear admiral, commanded her from commissioning until November 1943. Bernard William Freund relieved him and remained in command until 31 May 1945. In those years the destroyer took part in the Wake Island raid of 5 and 6 October 1943, the strike on Rabaul on 11 November 1943, the invasion of Tarawa, the occupation of Kwajalein and Majuro, the Admiralty Islands landings, the Hollandia operation, the seizures of Saipan and Guam, and the Okinawa campaign from March into May 1945.
Freund left Bullard on 31 May 1945. In the short interval before a new commanding officer reported, Lieutenant Henry Frederick Rodner had acting charge of the ship. He was not the captain. Steen, a lieutenant commander, took command on 16 June 1945.
His tour covered the closing weeks of the war and the first year of peace. The campaigns of the ship's earlier service were already behind her. Through most of 1946 Bullard operated along the West Coast, and she then reported to San Diego to be inactivated.
Steen was still her commanding officer when Bullard was placed out of commission in reserve on 20 December 1946. She remained in reserve for many years. Her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 December 1972, and on 3 December 1973 she was sold to be broken up for scrap.