How to Personalize Navy Tumblers: The Ship, the Hull Number and the Rate

Ask a soldier where they served and you get a unit. Ask a sailor and you get a ship. That difference is the whole reason a Navy tumbler works differently from every other branch's, and it is why the hardest part of ordering one is not the name or the dates. It is getting the ship right.

This is how to personalize Navy tumblers properly: which hull number to use, how to read the letters in front of it, why the rate on line two is almost always written wrong, and what to do when the ship you are thinking of was scrapped forty years ago.

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Everything Starts With the Hull Number

A ship's name is not unique. There have been four USS Enterprises that most people can name and several more that they cannot. There are two USS Indianas a generation apart, and they have nothing in common but a state. The hull number is what makes a ship a specific ship.

So the top line is not "USS Indiana." It is USS Indiana (SSN 789) — and that parenthetical is doing more work than anything else on the cup. It fixes the vessel in time, tells any other sailor exactly what kind of ship it was, and separates a submarine commissioned in 2018 from a battleship sunk into history in 1963.

One style note that trips people up. The Navy's own current websites write it without a hyphen — DDG 51, CVN 72, SSN 789. Naval History and Heritage Command, and most reference works, use a hyphen: DDG-51. Both forms are in real use and neither is wrong. Pick one and stay with it down the length of the cup.

How to Read a Hull Code

The letters are not random, and once you see the pattern you can read a hull code you have never met before. Three rules cover almost everything:

• A doubled letter is the plain version of that type. DD is a destroyer. SS is a submarine. FF is a frigate. BB was a battleship.
• A G on the end means guided missile. DD becomes DDG. FF becomes FFG. A cruiser becomes CG.
• An N on the end means nuclear powered. CV becomes CVN. SS becomes SSN.

Which gets you most of the fleet:

Code	Ship	Code	Ship
CV / CVN	Aircraft carrier / nuclear	SSN	Attack submarine
DD / DDG	Destroyer / guided missile	SSBN	Ballistic missile submarine
FF / FFG	Frigate / guided missile	SSGN	Guided missile submarine
CG	Guided missile cruiser	LHA / LHD	Amphibious assault ship
LPD	Amphibious transport dock	LSD	Dock landing ship
AS	Submarine tender	AO / AOE	Oiler / fast combat support
MCM	Mine countermeasures	LCS	Littoral combat ship

One more worth knowing, because it changes the two letters in front of the name: a T- prefix means the ship belongs to Military Sealift Command and is crewed by civilian mariners. Those ships are USNS, not USS. If someone sailed on a T-AO oiler, putting USS on their cup is the kind of error that gets noticed immediately.

The Rate Is Not the Rank, and the Number Is Not the Paygrade

This is where most Navy gifts go wrong, and it goes wrong in a way that is invisible to anyone who did not serve.

In the Navy, the rating is the job — Boatswain's Mate, Hospital Corpsman, Sonar Technician. The rate is the paygrade. A sailor is written as the two run together, and the number that follows the letters is the class number, not the paygrade number.

So BM3 is an E-4, not an E-3. A Boatswain's Mate Third Class. Get that wrong and you have quietly demoted someone on a gift.

Paygrade	Rate	Written
E-4	Petty Officer Third Class	BM3
E-5	Petty Officer Second Class	BM2
E-6	Petty Officer First Class	BM1
E-7	Chief Petty Officer	BMC
E-8	Senior Chief Petty Officer	BMCS
E-9	Master Chief Petty Officer	BMCM

Two things to notice. The letters swap in at chief instead of a number — C, then CS for senior chief, then CM for master chief. And the words flip round: an E-7 Boatswain's Mate is a Chief Boatswain's Mate, not a Boatswain's Mate Chief, even though the C sits at the end of the abbreviation. Chiefs care about this one.

Below E-4, a sailor working toward a rating carries the general rate instead of a number — a Gunner's Mate Seaman Apprentice is GMSA.

Officers are simpler and less forgiving: ENS, LTJG, LT, LCDR, CDR, CAPT. Not "Lt." on a cup that already uses all caps for the ship.

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If the Ship Is Already Gone

This is the part that matters most, and it is the reason this design exists at all.

Most Navy merchandise is built around ships that are currently in commission, because that is where the licensing and the ready-made artwork are. It leaves out almost everyone. The sailor who made two Westpacs on a Knox-class frigate that went to the breakers in 1994 cannot buy anything with his ship on it, and he is the person most likely to want one.

We draw the vessel to order, which means a decommissioned ship is exactly as available as an active one. A destroyer escort from 1944. A tender. A minesweeper nobody has heard of. If the ship existed, it can go on the cup.

Practically, that changes what you should put on line two. For a ship still in the fleet, the unit is the present tense — deployment, homeport, years aboard. For a ship that is gone, the dates are doing something different: they are the only record that a particular stretch of someone's life happened on a hull that no longer exists. USS BLANK (FF 1073) • 1989–1993 is a complete sentence.

Navy Ship Tumbler Gift Ideas, by Occasion

Most Navy ship tumbler gift ideas fall down in the same place: the wording is generic, so the occasion is invisible. Match the lines to the moment instead and the gift explains itself.

• Retirement. The last ship and the full span. This is the one time to use the whole career — rate, ship, years — because the point is the length of it.
• Change of command or transfer. The ship being left, and the dates aboard her. Not the new billet.
• Plankowner. If they were part of the original commissioning crew, say so. PLANKOWNER is one word and it carries a great deal.
• Decommissioning. The ship's name, the hull number, and the commissioning and decommissioning years. A cup for a ship that no longer exists is a legitimate thing to want.
• Ship's reunion. Hull number and the years that group served together. Everyone in the room reads it at a glance, which is the entire point.
• Memorial. Name, rate, ship, dates. Nothing else. Restraint does the work here.

A motto is the strongest line two when the ship actually has one. USS Indiana's is "Silent Victors" — a double meaning, nodding to Indianapolis's Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument and to the Silent Service both. A sailor from that boat recognizes it before they read the name above it. If you are not sure the ship had a motto, leave it out rather than borrow one from another hull.

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When You Don't Know the Ship

Common, and not a dead end. In rough order of how well they work:

• Ask someone else in the family. A spouse or a sibling usually knows the ship even when they know nothing else about the service.
• Look at the DD-214. It carries the rate, the dates and usually the last command.
• Look at the photographs. Navy sailors are photographed on their ship constantly, and the ball cap in the picture very often has the name and hull number stitched on it.
• Use less. Rate, last name and a date range make a good tumbler. A guessed hull number makes a bad one.

The order is not arbitrary. Vague and correct beats specific and wrong, every time. A missing detail reads as restraint. A wrong hull number reads as not having asked, and once it is printed it cannot be unread.

You see a proof by email before anything goes to press, so the last chance to catch it is there rather than on the doorstep. Check the hull number on the proof the way you would check the spelling of a name.

Fair Winds and Following Seas

It is the most requested line two, and it is worth getting the form right: Fair Winds and Following Seas. Both words plural, joined with "and." Not "fairwinds," which is not how the phrase is written.

A fair wind is one behind you; a following sea runs the same way you are traveling and eases the passage. Together they are a wish for an easy voyage. The Navy uses the phrase at beginnings and endings both — commissionings, retirements, changes of command, farewells and memorials — which is why it sits comfortably on a retirement cup and on a memorial one.

Its origin, for what it is worth, is unknown. The Naval Historical Center says so plainly. Anyone who tells you exactly where it came from is guessing.

Hand Wash, and the Name Stays On It

One care rule decides how long the print lasts. These are 20 oz double-wall stainless with a glossy varnished finish, and a dishwasher will lift that finish off — a miserable way to lose a hull number you spent an evening confirming. Hand wash and it stays for years. Everything else about them is hard-wearing: vacuum insulated, spill-resistant sliding lid with a rubber gasket, and slim enough for a truck cup holder.

When you know the ship, the personalized U.S. Navy ship tumbler takes the name, the hull number and two lines of your own, in black, white or silver — and we draw the vessel, so there is nothing for you to find or upload. The rest of the Navy range sits in Navy shirts and gifts, and the other branches are in personalized military shirts and gifts.

Buying for a different branch? The abbreviations do not carry across — we covered them separately in how to personalize a USMC tumbler and how to choose an Army personalized tumbler. All of them are in custom military tumblers with name and rank.