The Novel's Title

Rudyard Kipling wrote the novel in 1897 (or earlier, that's when it was published). The Wikipedia entry says that the title comes from the first line of a 19th Century ballad titled "Mary Ambree." The line is "When captains courageous, whom death could not daunt..."

Apparently the ballad is about Mary Ambree who was a captain (yes, a woman captain) of a group soldiers engaged in the liberation of Ghent, Belgium from Spanish occupation in 1584. She became the subject of many ballads written in the 17th century. I think the line is referring to "captains" in the general sense as leaders of 'men' or people. Everyone on the fishing boat could be considered a 'captain' in that sense and Harvey is learning from all of them.

After all, captain derives from a Latin word, "caput," meaning "head." It came to be used as the person in command of a ship during the 16th century and soon became used to refer to a junior officer of the land army in command of a company. I wish we still used "centurian" for that usage because a company is still about a hundred soldiers and we would not confuse it with captain as the senior officer of a ship.

The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.