USNS Watkins (T-AKR-315)

History
United States
Ordered:	23 May 1997
Builder:	National Steel and Shipbuilding Company
Laid down:	24 August 1999
Launched:	28 July 2000
In service:	2 March 2001
Status:	in service
General characteristics
Class & type:	Watson-class vehicle cargo ship
Displacement:	29,000 tons
Length:	950 ft
Beam:	106 ft
Draft:	34 ft
Propulsion:	Gas turbine

USNS Watkins (T-AKR-315) is one of Military Sealift Command's nineteen Large, Medium-Speed Roll-on/Roll-off Ships and is part of the 33 ships in the Prepositioning Program. She is a Watson-class vehicle cargo ship.

She was named for Master Sergeant Travis E. Watkins, a Medal of Honor recipient.

Laid down on 24 August 1999 and launched on 28 July 2000, Watkins was put into service in the Pacific Ocean on 2 March 2001.

According to The Guardian the human rights group Reprieve identified the Watkins and sixteen other USN vessels as having held "ghost prisoners" in clandestine extrajudicial detention.^[1]

References

1. Duncan Campbell, Richard Norton-Taylor (2 June 2008). "Prison ships, torture claims, and missing detainees". The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-06-01. mirror

• This article includes information collected from the Naval Vessel Register, which, as a U.S. government publication, is in the public domain. The entry can be found here.

External links

• Photo gallery at navsource.org