The play opens in late nineteenthcentury London, in a drawing room at the house of the Earl of Loam. Lord Loam has invited family members and guests to take tea with his household servants. The servants, ill at ease in the formal drawing room, sit or stand stiffly until the ordeal is over. The topic of conversation focuses on an upcoming trip aboard Lord Loam's yacht, Bluebell Loam, his three daughters, his nephew, and a clergyman are to make the sea voyage, and because of Loam's revolutionary desire to do away with "excessive luxury," his daughters are to have but one maid to accompany them, and he but one manservant.

The second and third acts occur on a deserted island in the Pacific where the passengers of the Bluebell find themselves after their ship is wrecked in a storm. After some rearranging of authorities and duties, the castaways...