"When the skipper of HMS Foam agrees to vacate his stateroom when his Mate's wife wants to take a short vacation onboard for a 10-day voyage, he has no idea that his own wife is also planning a surprise holiday on the ship. When the two women arrive, there is an immediate misunderstanding as to the arrangements... and the situation goes from bad to worse as the voyage progresses.
The only solution seems to be the mate's cunning plan of faking an outbreak of smallpox onboard, with the aim of persuading the ladies to leave at the next port and take a train home. But this strategy leads to a set of circumstances that the unhappy sailors could not have predicted...."