[f. FLAG sb.4 + SHIP sb.] A ship bearing an admiral’s flag.
1672. Lond. Gaz., No. 684/4. We … believe there are several other sunk, and amongst the rest a Flagship.
1740. Johnson, Life Blake, Wks. IV. 369. The rest of the English fleet now came in, and the fight was continued with the utmost degree of vigour and resolution, till the night gave the Dutch an opportunity of retiring, with the loss of one flagship, and six other men of war.
1887. Spectator, 30 July, 1019/1. The ‘Inflexible,’ the flagship for the Admiral. Fitted with engines of 8,000 horse-power, armed with four 80-ton guns in her turrets, eight light guns, four quick-firing and seventeen machine-guns, and three torpedo-tubes, protected with armour-plates of iron nearly two-feet thick, and able to steam more than fifteen miles an hour, the ‘Inflexible’ alone could have dealt destruction to a whole squadron of the days of Nelson.
