Future US Navy towing and salvage ship to honour Narragansett Tribe of Rhode Island

A future US Navy Navajo-class towing, salvage, and rescue ship (T-ATS) will be named USNS Narragansett in honour of the Narragansett Native American Tribe of Rhode Island, US Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro confirmed on Tuesday, June 18. The naming selection of the future Narragansett follows the tradition of the Navajo-class of naming towing, salvage and rescue ships after prominent Native Americans or Native American tribes.

The Navajo-class T-ATS will provide ocean-going tug, salvage, and rescue capabilities to support fleet operations. It will replace and fulfill the capabilities that were previously provided by the US Navy's Powhatan-class fleet ocean tug (T-ATF 166) and Safeguard-class rescue and salvage ships (T-ARS 50) class ships.

As with its sisters, the future Narragansett will be built as a multi-mission platform that will be deployed to support a range of missions such as towing, rescue, salvage, humanitarian assistance, oil spill response, and wide-area search and surveillance operations using unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The T-ATS will be operated by the Military Sealift Command.