For 25 hours last week Britain's mammoth liner Queen Mary lay at a Southampton wharf as helpless as a beached whale. Her promenade decks and immense saloons crawled with distinguished passengers in mink wraps and Homburg hats.
On the great ship's bridge, gold-braided, choleric Commodore Cyril Gordon Illingworth paced restlessly. "We'll sail at 3 p.m.," he had said confidently the day before. But for once the Queen Mary's well-disciplined crew paid no heed to their commander's orders. In a strike meeting in a drafty wharfside shed, they were listening instead to the passionate...
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