Commodore of the fleet

One of the best shipmaster's with which I ever sailed was, like the majority of captains of that era, a thorough alcoholic.  They had time on their hands but little other interest.  A man of some intellect, he once took the ships chronometer apart to show his cadets how it worked.  More to the point, when he reassembled the mechanism, it actually still worked.  The master of my one trip on the company passenger/ mailboat  was the aforementioned martinet, who liked to call himself  fleet commodore.  Company policy stated that if you were overtaking the Aureol it was to be done beyond the horizon.  The Ebani was gifted to the company after the war and as such had an admiralty supercharger fitted to her main engine, increasing her speed from 18 to 25 knots.  When I reported that we were overtaking the Aureol I expected a change of course to take us over the horizon.  The captain arrived on the bridge in underpants and string vest and flip flops.  " get the chief, I want max speed".  Chief arrives to be told we were to do a test on the supercharger.  Once up to speed we then overtook the Aureol and in fact circled it twice with our captain, still in underpants and string vest, waving to an obviously infuriated " fleet Commodore".  I thought we were all dead on our return to Liverpool.  However, our captain must have had friends in high places because we heard no more about it.