Getting married by James T. Kirk ranks right up there with marrying a Cartwright. It’s gonna be a short marriage.
Well, it’s a pretty small data set, after all. He only did it once, that we know of.
In the recent “Deflectors” episode of the sf comedy/drama The Orville, set aboard a Planetary Union starship sometime in the future, Capt. Ed Mercer mentions that he has the authority to perform weddings.
Captain Sisko performs at least one marriage on DS9, but that may have been in his religious role as the Emissary of the Prophets irrespective of his role in Starfleet.
Yes, that’s how I remember it, too.
I was thinking that he was implied to have authority to solemnize marriages in both capacities, but I am not sure.
I just finished The Fortune of War (1979), the novel in the series just before The Surgeon’s Mate (1980), and in it Capt. Broke of HMS Shannon is told by his crotchety old ship’s clerk, when he asks, that the captain does indeed have authority to marry a couple.
Babbington does say it is in his manual “after the burial service”, so I guess we could check.
It’s a null set, in fact, they don’t even finish the ceremony.
It’s wrong to insist on a single definite answer to such an ambiguous question.
If the question were ‘Will courts of the U.S.A. uphold a marriage by a ship’s captain’ then we’d know the answer, already given up-thread: ‘Unclear; of two cited court cases one upheld the marriage, the other didn’t.’
But the U.S.A. is not the only government or culture in the world. And the 21st century is not the only epoch.
Many cultures have ideas about the solemnization of marriage, and sometimes government doesn’t get involved at all. Often the key issue is whether the couple can morally sleep together, and NOT, e.g. what boxes they’re legally allowed to check on a Form 1040.
In many human cultures the key part of a marriage ceremony is that the wedding be witnessed in a dignified setting by serious witnesses. That such a ceremony at sea can and should be directed by the ship’s captain is too obvious for debate.
Bumped.
Here’s more on Cunard captains and Bermuda law: http://bermudasun.bm/Content/NEWS/Breakaway/Article/Cunard-register-ships-in-Bermuda/24/1307/54833