British audiences were, titillated early this year by a new film farce called The Captain's Table, which chronicled the social perils of a luxury-liner captain adrift in a sea of calculating female passengers. Last week all England was agog over a real-life-setting of The Captain's Table. The captain: a tall, debonair Irishman named James D. Armstrong, master of the 28,000-ton Cunard liner Britannic, The plot: he had been royally sacked by Britain's staid, prosperous Cunard Steamship Co. just a few months before he was due to become master of the Queen Mary, and eventually commodore of the line.
Though neither...