The tiger and the soup tureen

[anteros_lmc]

If you cast your minds back, some of you might remember the tiger acquired by Pellew in India, that has put in an appearance in various historical and fictional posts here. Pellew seems to have had a bit of a weakness for exotic animals in general and tigers in particular, which caused his wife Susan no small degree of consternation. You may

Comments

[vespican]

A slight variation on the idea of a ship's cat!

[anteros_lmc]

Just a bit! Mind you, if that's the ship's cat, I'd hate to see the size of the rats aboard the Culloden! ;)

[eglantine_br]

That is absolutely adorable! I can just see the tiger falling through the skylight and landing in the soup! Cats are all the same are they not? If there is a table and people are sitting around it they want to be on it!

And the naughty mids were apparently mast-headed for romping too vigorously with the tiger. I wonder if they mentioned the incident in letters home? It might make a mother worry...

[anteros_lmc]

It's such a cat thing to do isn't it? :D

I should imagine any middies writing home about the ships cat would indeed have caused some consternation among anxious mothers.

[mylodon]

Abso-blooming-lutely brilliant.

I have a lovely book (it's not really a book, more a pamphlet) about the Tower zoo if you and nodbear want to have a borrow of it.

[anteros_lmc]

Isn't it priceless! :)

I'd love to have a borrow of your Tower zoo book sometime, or let me know the author and I'll see if I can track down a copy myself. nodbear and I would love to write a short paper about Ned's menagerie one day.

[mylodon]

It's called "The Royal menagerie at the tower of London" by Geoffrey Parnell. Let me know if you can't find a reasonably priced copy.

[nodbear]

Great that you managed to post this and yes it is such a classic Ned Pellew story - grand dining, generous hospitality, frolicking mids and a tyger .

I expect the incident did become known at home to the dismay of some mothers ! I wonder who the leading culprit mids were who were mastheaded ?

of course it would be possible to know who were the mids at the time ..

here just by the by is an earlier page of Cullodens muster with a number of mids of interest and Will Warden as a lieutenant . Sadly this is 1804 though so a little early for the tyger miscreants

[anteros_lmc]

It's such a classic Ned story isn't it? It's the kind of thing you really couldn't make up :D

Do we know if any of the Indefatigables were aboard the Culloden in 1809? John Gaze must have been there at least surely.

[ylla]

And some people complain about wombats and sloths :-)

The poor tiger must have been just as startled as the guests!

[anteros_lmc]

Yes indeed! Stephen Maturin has nothing on Ned Pellew!

Poor tiger must have been very startled indeed :}