who commands a ship when an Admiral and the Captain is on a same ship?
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Command of a ship is something that is explicitly defined and assigned; it does not default to whoever is the highest ranking person on the ship. So the answer is: whichever of the two (probably the Captain) is assigned as the Commanding Officer (CO) of that ship.
The captain commands the ship; that’s an ancient and immutable naval tradition. Admirals can give orders to captains, but each captain is the master of their individual ship.
If the admiral doesn’t like what they’re doing, they can relieve the captain and either assume command personally or appoint someone else. But until the moment they do that, the captain is in charge. An admiral just countermanding the orders of a captain at sea would be grossly out of line, and IMHO a super bad example for the admiral to set.
If we aren’t talking about a movie…the two officers should talk in private and iron out any disagreements or misunderstandings there, so that when they’re in front of the crew they look harmonious and professional. If that doesn’t happen, they (and particularly the admiral, for whom the expectations are even higher) have royally screwed up.
In a group of ships, each of the ships have a captain that is in charge of that ship.
There is an admiral in charge of the overall formation – or fleet – of ships. The admiral is said to have their “flag” on that ship, and the captain on the same ship is called the “flag captain”.
The admiral may have a separate command space in the ship known as the “flag bridge”. The admiral is in charge of the whole fleet and doesn’t concern themselves with they ship they happen to be on.
The same sort of thing happens on a single ship. The captain is in charge of strategy and planning looking forward, and the executive officer is in charge of the day-to-day operation of the ship.
The captain is in charge of their ship. The admiral’s role is to command the larger group of ships. They will generally do this from some form of Operations Room that is not on the bridge.
The CO is typicaly the Captain.
Whenever an Admiral is on bourd, thier role is usualy as the leader of the Task Force, Group or Unit of ships, operation, mission or whatever.
An Admiral can take control of the ship but its prety much unheard of outside of war exercises where lets say “suddenly” its announced that X portion of the crew is out of action.
Let me give you a real example. I was with the Danish Navy, where every crewmember is given a number in the 101-399 range The crew is equalily divided in the 100s place, so every 3rd crewmember has a 100, 200 or 300 number. My number on my last deployment was 214. Meaning: I was on 2nd shift, (hundred). 1 was my department/role (tens) and 4th member of the team (single digit).
In the war exercise, in the middle of the simelated battle, it was announced shipwide that we had hit a mine and everyone with a 100 number was either dead or injoured. Suddenly the Captain was no longer in command as he had number 101. And earlier the 2nd in command was also out of action for another reason. So instead of disrupting the command structure completely, the Admiral took command and carried on with the exercise until the sudden “emergency” was under control.
And I must say, it was quite fun becouse noone but us guys at the radiostation and the Operations Officer knew about this added element as the command had come directly from the Admiralty as a test for the Admiral.
The Captain commands the ship, the Admiral commands the fleet. The admiral might command the Flagship to move, but its the Captains responsibility that the flagship is moved.
As several have stated, Admirals command Fleets, several ships. The Captain or Commander is in charge of individual ships. If Admiral is aboard and is flag is transferred the overall operational control of the individual ship remains with the Captain.
There is exactly one situation in which an embarked Admiral would take command of the ship, and that is if the CO is killed in battle, in which case regulations dictate that the highest-ranking command-eligible officer becomes the CO.
Even in that situation, the admiral is going to relinquish command to the XO 99% of the time, as the admiral does not know the ship, or her crew. As well, the admiral is still in command of the battle group, and is not going to burden themselves with giving orders to the bridge crew.
Alas, real life is not analogous to Star Trek, or any other Naval show/movie, really. It’s just not exciting, and doesn’t make for good hollywood fodder.
Stupid question but in modern times (say in the US navy or the Royal navy or whatever) do Admirals spend a lot of time at sea?
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