Cap’n Bill Wheedles

Bill Wheedles first went to sea as a boy; a deckhand on the whaling ship, Thunder, in 1848. In the next half century he sailed over most of world’s oceans, met kings and cannibals, found and lost fortunes until finally, as Captain of the Anemone, his left leg was crushed by falling cargo. The leg became infected and needed to be amputated below the knee. Bill got himself a wooden peg leg but he no longer had the stamina for the sea. He retired to the California boarding house owned by Charlie Griffiths, his former First Mate.

His retirement coincided with the birth of Mayre, the Griffiths’ daughter. Bill became the girl’s favored companion. He and Trot (as the girl was generally called) had had minor normal adventures until, in 1911, their travels truly began. They journeyed to the bottom of the sea, to islands in the sky and eventually, to the Land of Oz, where, for a time, they settled down again.

Bill lost his left leg again (this time above the knee) in 1959 sometime during one of Kanaloa’s harvest festivals. The god provided him with a new (and magical) wooden leg. With the new leg Bill went back to the oceans. By Royal Commission, he has spent the last couple of decades charting the charting the Nonestic Sea.