Plankowner
Crewman on North American military ship
A plankowner (also referred to a plank owner and sometimes a plank holder) is a person who was a member of the crew of a United States Navy ship or United States Coast Guard Cutter when that ship was placed in commission. Originally, this term applied only to crew members that were present at the ship's first commissioning. Today plankowner is often applied to members of newly commissioned units, new military bases and recommissioning crews as well.
In U.S. military
Plankowner is a term used by the United States Navy, and has consequently been variously defined by different units. The origin of the term is the implication that a crew member was around when the ship was being built and commissioned, and therefore has bragging rights to the "ownership" of one of the planks in the main deck.
Historically, a plankowner in the United States Navy and United States Coast Guard, or his widow, could petition the Naval Historical Center's Curator Branch for a piece of the deck when the ship was decommissioned. This practice has been discontinued and stocks of planking that existed at the Curator branch have been donated to various veteran's organizations.
In the United States Navy SEALs, the term refers to the original or "founding" members of a SEAL Team.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Plankowner” as crewman on North American military ship. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as crewman on North American military ship. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7201318. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Plankowner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.