No respect

Three times round the world in the 1760 & 1770s and look what happens in your home port. Seagulls crap on your head. Just no respect.

This is of course Captain Cook and we were in Whitby,

land of glorious fish and chips and kippers. The car now reeks of smoked fish but that's a small price to pay for the best kippers in Britain. Others from Craster, Arbroath etc may disagree but, look, you're just wrong. Whitby rules!!

I had one of the kippers for my tea (I am obliged by Madam Wilbury to cook it outdoors on a camping stove, otherwise the house reeks too) and very lovely it was too.

Incidentally, have I ever told you the story of Captain Cook's goat? Oh well, if you insist.

Back in 1768, when Cook was victualling the Endeavour he added to the crew a goat, to provide milk for the officers and the sick. But this was no ordinary goat. This goat had just returned from circumnavigating the globe on board the Dolphin. So, at a time when most people travelled hardly at all and often no further than the nearest market town, here was a goat which had already circumnavigated the globe once and was about to set off and do it again.

The goat, of course, to maintain a milk supply, would have had to be "put to the billy" at some stage along the journey and there would doubtless have been kids (this is kids in the goat sense, you understand). Interestingly, descendants of these kids are thought to survive on Arapawa Island, NZ, and are under threat of a cull.

Great story! Some goat!! Respect!!

Unlike some of his crew the goat came back safely a second time and settled down to an honourable retirement with Mrs Cook in the Mile End Road.