United States Ship

United States Ship (abbreviated as USS or U.S.S.) is a ship prefix used to identify a commissioned ship of the United States Navy and only applies to a ship while she is in commission. Before commissioning, she is referred to as "Pre Commissioning Unit" (PCU). After decommissioning, she is referred to by name, with no prefix.

From the early beginnings of the U.S. Navy there had been no standard method of referring to U.S. Navy ships until 1907 when President Theodore Roosevelt issued Executive Order 549 on 8 January stating that all US Navy ships were to be referred to as "The name of such vessel, preceded by the words, United States Ship, or the letters U.S.S., and by no other words or letters".

Today's Navy Regulations define the classification and status of naval ships and craft:

  1. The Chief of Naval Operations shall be responsible for ... the assignment of classification for administrative purposes to water-borne craft and the designation of status for each ship and service craft. ....
  2. Commissioned vessels and craft shall be called "United States Ship" or "U.S.S."
  3. Civilian manned ships, of the Military Sealift Command or other commands, designated "active status, in service" shall be called "United States Naval Ship" or "U.S.N.S."
  4. Ships and service craft designated "active status, in service," except those described by paragraph 3 of this article, shall be referred to by name, when assigned, classification, and hull number (e.g., "HIGH POINT PCH-1" or "YOGN-8").
— United States Navy Regulations, 1990, Article 0406.

Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states and/or ship:

    “I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.”
    —Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)

    “The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
    —Maya Angelou (b. 1928)

    “The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.”
    —Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)

    “I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch ... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order ... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.”
    —Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen] (1885–1962)