Walter ‘Arbinson Wimpole FitzThomas was born in 1725 in the now non-existent village of Fennly-on-the-Wold, in what is now the East Riding of Yorkshire. FitzThomas was the son of Flemmish immigrant Liège Waffle makers who travelled to England in the hope of creating an Anglo-Flemmish variant of the waffle.

With the failure of the family Lard Waffle business in 1740 FitzThomas opted to join the Whitby based Reykjavik bound Scooner The Timid Turtle. The Turtle, originally commissioned as a dredger for the River Foss, just outside York, made a poor ocean going vessel, being only 37 feet long and 11 feet wide. The Captain of the Turtle, one Dooglas Smithsonson, took FitzThomas on the Turtle to help with “maps and things.”.

Three months after leaving Whitby they arrived not in Reykjavik but in the West African port of Oolumbi, now located in the famous coffee region of Togo. Coffee from the region is now the most widely drunk coffee in most parts of North America, Europe and large parts of Asia. The tag line ‘Coffee To Go’ can be found on almost every high and low street.

It was in Togo that FitzThomas first encountered the Marrowfat pea. Given the high humidity levels and the high average temperatures in the region the Marrowfat, or Marroofi, in the local Togian dialect, were an exceptionally soft vegetable, often proving largely ineffective as a weapon, only causing a mild bruise and slight discolouration on impact. It was not long after FitzThomas’ arrival that the Togians started to use darts as an alternative weapon. He suffered a number of minor abrasions.

As the inherent weakness of the Marroofi proved ineffective in combat, it did make a useful ingredient in the local epicurean delicacy of stuffed cocoa leaves stuffed into spit roasted tapir. Tapirs were less enthusiastic about cocoa leaves and positively abhorrent towards the humble pea. Tapirs have now all but moved on from Togo.

After four months in Oolumbi, replenishing supplies and gorging first on roasted Tapir then on macadodoo nuts, FitzThomas and Smithsonson finally left the former Togoan capital and headed home. Again, sadly, as bad as FitzThomas inherited Liege Waffle skills were, this was nothing compared to how bad his navigational skills were.

Smithsonson had not yet adopted the Harrison inspired Marine Chronometers that were making long distant sea travel safer and long maintained that divining sticks, salt buckets and an astrolabe were more than sufficient. Five months after leaving Togo the Timid Turtle arrived in Edinburgh; not the English town to the north of Tweed, but Edinburgh, the capital of Tristan da Cunha.

Smithsonson and FitzThomas first met Tristan on a Wednesday, lounging on the beach. Wednesdays were half day closing. Tristan was watching the local scuttling beetle build equilateral triangle’s from pieces of twig. Scuttling beetles are indigenous to the island and have evolved their curious defence mechanism largely as a tactic of confusing potential predators, giving the beetle enough time to find a large fern to hide under.

Tristan had been on the island for some time and as such had long ago run out of ugals and was nearing the end of his supply of port. Smithsonson and FitzThomas introduced Tristan to the Marroofi. Tristian, who originally of Maderian parentage, immediately distilled the Marroofi into an apéritif, an endeavour of which he was hugely successful. The island had very few trees and nobody knew anybody called Cooper and as such there was no way to actually store the Marroofi juice, and, being men, were spectacularly poor at estimating ingredients. The Marroofi juice was A; distilled in large amounts B; astonishingly strong and C; consumed far too quickly.

In the summer of 1762 The Timid Turtle was spotted by a fleet of Malagasy canoes, who, by an interesting miscalculation and a mis-carry of a 7 had gone east, instead of west and instead of hitting Zambezia had gone the long way round. They’d been at sea for two and half years.

The Malagasy sailors also did not know anyone called Cooper and as such settled down for a small toast. The Malagasy didn’t really enjoy the apéritif and instead offered to join Smithsonson, FitzThomas and Tristan on the Timid Turtle, combine forces and sail the entire party east. However, contrary to common parlance, it is not always true the two heads are better than one, as such, 37 were no better than three at map reading and it was late autumn, 1769, when the Turtle, less Timid and more bemused, was caught in the wake of a large pod of orcas who were migrating north, not east.

It was Smithsonson who finally decided that Fitzville and Cunhaland were not good names and settled on the name of the New Found Land they crashed into two months earlier, naming it after their new favourite dish and former favourite pet.

FitzThomas soon made contact with the local trading routes, who were so enamoured with the both the outrigger canoe stowed in the belly of the Turtle as well as the Marroofi juice that he decided that, rather than attempt another water adventure, he would, at last stay put.

It is testament to both irony and schadenfreude that, only three months later, the Great Storm of 1770 battered the Turtles final port for three whole weeks, destroying the now Tired Turtle, but, providing FitzThomas with a large section of fo’c’sle on which he would be able to drift east, finally arriving in Islay in the later part of 1771.

FitzThomas, alone, hungry, unshaven and bemused, did the only thing he had any real talent for; the distillation of the Marooffi bean. Happily, there were local distillation skills, using alternative ingredients.