"The flagship "in extremis"" [2019] ELECD 1375; in Broekman, M. Jan (ed), "Rethinking Law and Language" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 20

Book Title: Rethinking Law and Language

Editor(s): Broekman, M. Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: INTERMEZZO 1

Section Title: The flagship “in extremis”

Number of pages: 6

Extract:

INTERMEZZO 1



The flagship "in extremis"


Ideas of extremity were undoubtedly in the minds of many of the 2,223
passengers who started a unique trip in the late afternoon of April 14,
1912 on the greatest flagship of all, the flagship in extremis named the
Titanic. We know the names of many persons on board, even their
location on specific decks, because Walter Lord described them in his
famous 1955 book A Night to Remember. Precious pieces packed in
passengers' luggage are today the object of sales, speculation, and
collector mania--recall the 2016 "Premier Exhibitions" offers. The
passengers' diversity was also an index of their wealth and related social
position, so that the book fused several key stories and fragments of
discussion with a variety of social contexts and roles persons played on
the unsinkable ship during its crucial hours.1
But the Titanic was neither officially nor in reality a flagship. Despite
the supreme categories used to describe the Titanic, it was never a
flagship in the correct and legal sense of the word. In the hundreds of
essays, articles, and reviews published on the adventures of the ship,
there was no commander to uphold a nation's flag on the ship in a legally
correct manner, no legal or economic qualification of the wharf, of the
shipbuilding company, of the providers of all techniques and luxury on
board that could officially make the ship a flagship. It was not the lead
ship in a fleet of ...