A plank owner is the original crew of a ship — the sailors and officers who were aboard when the ship was first commissioned, who stood at quarters on the pier or in the shipyard while the commissioning pennant was broken and the order was given to "man our ship and bring her to life." The term comes from the age of wooden ships, when a departing sailor was sometimes given a plank from the ship's deck as a memento of his service. The practice of giving planks ended with wooden ships, but the term endured, and the identity it confers has only grown more significant as the Navy has evolved. To be a plank owner is to have been present at the beginning — to be part of the crew that took a ship from construction to commissioned warship for the first time. No subsequent crew can claim that distinction regardless of how long they serve aboard or how much they contribute. The plank owners were first.
What the Commissioning Ceremony Means
A Navy commissioning ceremony is a formal ritual with precise elements: the official party, the reading of the orders, the inspection of the crew, the first raising of the ensign and the jack, and the command to "man our ship and bring her to life" — at which the crew runs aboard and takes their stations, and the ship becomes active in a way that she was not a moment before. The ceremony transforms a hull into a commissioned warship, and the crew that stands at quarters during that transformation is permanently attached, in naval tradition and in personal identity, to the event. They were there. They were first.
The commissioning crew trains together for months before the ceremony — the pre-commissioning unit, or PCU, that works up the ship in the final stages of construction and trials. They are present for the ship's first sea trials, her first underway, her first time doing everything that a warship does. They develop an attachment to the ship that later crews, who inherit a working warship rather than bringing one to life, experience differently. The pre-commissioning crew knows the ship in a way that nobody else ever will.
The Plank Owner Certificate
Commissioning plank owners receive a certificate that records their status — a formal document, signed by the commanding officer, attesting that the bearer was a member of the first crew. These certificates are among the most prized possessions that Navy veterans keep. They appear in shadow boxes alongside command coins, rate insignia, and cruise patches. They are displayed in the homes of men and women who served fifty years ago and have been out of the Navy for decades. The certificate is not just a document; it is evidence of something that cannot be repeated and cannot be taken away.
Ships sometimes hold plank owner reunions decades after commissioning, gathering the original crew to mark anniversaries — the thirtieth year, the fortieth, the decommissioning. At these events, the sailors who were twenty-two years old at the commissioning ceremony come back as sixty-year-olds, and the ship is there, or the memory of it is there, and the bond that formed in those first months together reasserts itself with a clarity that years of separation cannot diminish. The plank owner identity is not just a historical fact. It is a community.
Being First
The Navy commissions new ships regularly, which means that somewhere, right now, a pre-commissioning crew is going through the process of bringing a new ship to life — learning her systems, running her trials, preparing for the ceremony. The sailors who will stand at quarters on commissioning day don't yet know what they're becoming. They find out later, in the years after they've left the ship and the Navy, when they discover that the identity of plank owner is one of the ones that lasts.
If you were a plank owner — if you were there when they broke the pennant and gave the order — The Ship's Store carries collections for the ships where that happened. The ship you brought to life is in there somewhere.