first-rate vs flagship

first-rate

noun
  • A first-rate ship of the line. 

adj
  • Of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having at least 100 guns across three gun decks, a complement of 850–875, and weighing approximately 2,500 tons burthen. 

  • Superb, exceptional; of the best sort; very high quality. 

flagship

noun
  • The ship regarded as most important out of a group, e.g. a nation's navy or company's fleet. 

  • The most important one out of a related group. 

  • The ship occupied by the fleet's commander (usually an admiral); it denotes this by flying his flag. 

verb
  • To act as a flagship for. 

How often have the words first-rate and flagship occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )