USS Watts (DD-567) was a Fletcher-class destroyer of the United States Navy. Namesake Little is known about John Watts other than that he was an American merchant captain at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. Probably born about 1778, location unknown but most likely in Virginia, he was captain of the 18-gun, armed merchantman Planter in 1799. Watts is remembered for an action between Planter and a 22-gun French privateer which took place on 10 July 1799 in the eastern Atlantic during the Quasi-War with France. During that five-hour engagement, Watts and Planter'''s 43-man crew successfully fought off two concerted attacks by the more heavily armed Frenchman and thwarted the privateers' attempt to take the American ship. Watts and his crew received a generous reward for their efforts from Lloyd's Coffee House in London, the forerunner of the world-famous insurance company Lloyd's of London.Watts presumably continued in merchant service after the adventure with the French privateer, but he never served in the United States Navy. John Watts died in 1823, again location unknown. Construction and commissioningWatts was laid down on 26 March 1943 at Seattle, by the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corp.; launched on 31 December 1943, sponsored by Mrs. Judith Bundick Gardner; and commissioned on 29 April 1944. 1944 Following two weeks of testing and calibrating equipment in Puget Sound, Watts embarked upon her first voyage on 17 May. She headed for San Diego and a month of shakedown training. She returned to Bremerton, Wash. on 26 June and underwent three weeks of post-shakedown availability. On 12 July, she departed Bremerton in company with battleships (BB-41) and West Virginia (BB-48) bound for San Diego. The destroyer remained at San Diego until the 22d, at which time she put to sea in the screen of a Hawaii-bound convoy of troop transports. She arrived in Pearl Harbor on 29 July and remained only until 3 August when she stood out with Destroyer Division 113 (DesDiv 113) and shaped a course for Aleutian waters. On 8 August, Watts led her division mates into port at Adak, Alaska. During the next seven months, the destroyer operated with the other units of DesDiv 113 as a part of the Navy's North Pacific Force. Since her assignment there came well after America had consolidated her hold on the Aleutians chain, the bulk of Watts' duties consisted of patrols and supply convoy-escort