Lt. Cmdr. Phil Rogers, Ark Royal's part-time spokesman, was good enough to stand the round; he included my drink on the slip of paper that officers give to enlisted bartenders, which the ship's pursers use to track who drinks what. Officers' bar tabs, as recorded in these order slips, are added in their mess bills, so the ship can recover the cost and crew members don't need to carry cash.

Ark Royal's wardroom bar is a seagoing Elysium. The ship deploys equipped with stout, bitters, lager, red wine, white wine, gin, whiskey, whisky, and - of course - Pusser's Navy Rum, the rum of "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash" fame, which, properly diluted, is the main ingredient in the Royal Navy's most famous beverage: grog. The wardroom also displays a set of enormous Glengoyne whisky barrels, because Glengoyne "was the queen mother's favorite tipple," said Cmdr. Dan Ferris, Ark Royal's weapons officer; Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (aka the "Queen Mum") was Ark Royal's sponsor.

But for American visitors, the alcohol isn't the most unfamiliar or unusual thing aboard. If you took the booze away, you'd still have something almost no U.S. Navy ship has: A command-sanctioned area for every hand aboard to unwind, relax and socialize while off duty, making life eminently more enjoyable over the course of your months underway.

From the junior-most ratings - who are issued two cans of beer per day - to the chiefs, enlisted sailors get their own spaces, too, although, to be sure, the wardroom seemed like the nicest such spot aboard.

It helps that Ark Royal's officers, who were very generous hosts, relax in a distinctive way: On the evening we joined them, officers from the carrier and its air wing wore fresh, clean evening uniforms, sporting command cummerbunds - yes, you read that right - including a fuzzy, striped number on members of 814 Naval Air Squadron, the "Flying Tigers," Ark Royal's detachment of Merlin helicopters. Officers chatted, munched hors d'œuvre, and sipped their drinks; when it was time to eat, many people took along bottles of wine to the dining room across the passageway.

The scene in the wardroom bar was livelier after dinner, especially on an evening when the air wing wasn't flying the next day, meaning all its pilots could drink too. The atmosphere was about what you'd see in a land bar at about 9:30 on a Wednesday: Not quite boisterous; just short of rollicking; but loud and lively enough that it was clear everyone was enjoying themselves. An iPod was hooked up to the wardroom hi-fi playing Muse, Bloc Party and Lady Gaga. Compared to what can feel like the mandatory fun of command events I've seen in the U.S. Navy - well, there was no comparison. In the American military, as we've seen, if you aren't working or sleeping, we'll find you something to do, shipmate!

The closest natural thing I've ever seen on an American ship was aboard the Military Sealift Command dry cargo and ammunition ship Robert E. Peary, where the crew of civilian mariners "went home" after the end of the work day, buttoning themselves up in their private staterooms for satellite TV and sluggish e-mail.

But those were civmars, not active-duty sailors, and even they didn't have anything like a formal social hour before dinner. Everyone knows that American sailors hang out together when they're off duty, but our squadron rooms, damage control lockers and helicopter hangars have nothing on the Brits' dedicated leisure areas.

Think about it: The Royal Navy in general, and Ark Royal's skipper specifically, trusts sailors enough not just to permit them to have a drink, but to spend time almost every night doing nothing but enjoying themselves. Not studying for advancement. Not preparing the new training plan. Not clicking through "e-learning" CDs on a computer.

Instead, Capt. John Clink, Ark Royal's commanding officer, has a motto for the crew in the ladder wells: "Live, Lead, Laugh." And yet somehow work gets done, equipment gets repaired, aircraft get launched and recovered, and Ark Royal makes its way from its home port in Portsmouth to its destinations and back again. But can the crew keep itself in line?

"It's not an issue. And it's not like people show up to work pissed," Ferris said. "If they do, they're punished - severely. But they don't, because they don't want to lose this privilege."

Royal Navy sailors have kept the privilege since the 16th Century, with only a few noteworthy mutinies you could hold against them. Could American sailors handle it? They used to be able to, until Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels' now infamous General Order 99 of June 1, 1914. Is it time to revisit that prohibition and give American sailors another chance to drink at sea?