The story, presumably a disguised version of a true story, concerned the Steam Ship Rockingham, at the start of the story listed at Lloyd's as overdue in rough weather in the Atlantic, this being before such ships had radios (a big liner would have had). The core of the story is the master's wife who knew full well what overdue meant in the circumstances and could do no more than wait.
She also knew that her husband would not abandon ship, which as things turned out, according to various mariners who might be presumed to have known, he perhaps should have. However, as it also turned out, by some feat of seamanship - which included starting to burn his cargo of grain when the coal ran out - he managed to get his ship into Queenstown, a natural harbor a little to the southeast of Cork, since renamed Cobh. A little later he was fêted by the underwriters in London, somewhat to his embarrassment.
Was this because he knew that he had gambled with the lives of his men - and that it was as much his luck as his seamanship which had brought them through? Was he right to have done so? Was it his call as master and that was the end of it? He must, at least, have had something special about him to have held his crew together through such a pass, of some weeks duration. No doubt today, in anything like similar circumstances, he would have to take his instructions from HQ.
A fitting postscript to the visit to Greenwich. Not available from Gutenburg or on Kindle, but Amazon do do a second hand copy of the same edition that I am looking at for about the same as I paid for it (secondhand) some ago, that is to say £5. Perhaps it was a successful book and there are a lot of them about. Perhaps I should suggest something to the people at Greenwich.
PS: 'vignette' is not really the right word as the thing is more than a sketch. I had thought of the odd Joycean term 'epiphany', obscurer but perhaps nearer, although I think his epiphanies were rather shorter than this.
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