Flagship

A Flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag.

• Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically the first (namesake), largest, fastest, most heavily armed, or best known.

Description (Specifications)

It is a common practice that such vessels are the most capable or powerful in the fleet.

• Extra comforts may be built into such ships for the enjoyments of flag officers and their guests.
• Such vessels may feature extra communications gear or more powerful subcraft for interfleet communications.

Image Repository

1. Tigress class Dreadnoughts are often used as flagships within the Imperial Navy.
   

History & Background (Dossier)

In common naval use, the term flagship is fundamentally a temporary designation, a flagship is wherever the admiral's flag is being flown. However, admirals have always needed additional facilities, including a meeting room large enough to hold all the captains of the fleet and a place for the admiral's staff to make plans and draw up orders. Historically, only larger ships could accommodate such requirements.

The term was also used by commercial fleets, when the distinction between a nation's navy and merchant fleet was not clear. Many interface lines still use a command ship to coordinate trade across sectors. They are often used as portable headquarters. Some larger ships may have a separate flag bridge for use by the admiral and his staff while the captain commands from the main navigation bridge. Because its primary function is to coordinate a fleet, a flagship is not necessarily more heavily armed or armored than other ships. Modern flagships are designed primarily for command and control rather than for fighting, and are also known as command ships.

References & Contributors (Sources)

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Command_ship. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of Wikipedia is available under the Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Flagship. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of Wikipedia is available under the Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Traveller Wiki Editorial Team
• Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master of Sophontology Maksim-Smelchak of the Ministry of Science