The Episode of the Phoenician Tea of the Sargasso

One of the most significant tea finds in naval history was by the great 19th century explorer poet, Sir Robert Hargreaves-Smythe. Sir Robert was deep sea diving in the Sargasso Sea on assignment from HMG's Exploration Office, in search of the fabled Kraken, when his brass diving bell touched the prow of a wreck. The sunken ship proved to be of Phoenician origin, possibly a triereme, although how the vessel came to be in those waters is unknown. Sir Robert managed to extract some porcelain (bearing Sanskrit writing) and a small sealed jar contain a mix of dried herbs. Sir Robert was quite perplexed as to the purpose of these herbs, and the mystery was only solved when his cabin boy, precocious at the best of times, tripped over a pile of naval charts while carrying the precious jar, sending the precious contents flying into a silver bowl of hot clean water which Sir Robert had intended to use while shaving. The heady, aromatic flavour had Sir Robert salivating profusely, by his own admission in his diaries (now kept at the British Museum), and without hesitation his sipped the brew, experiencing a taste which Sir Robert is reported to have described during his subsequent lecture at Oxford as ""more enchanting than an Indo-Chinee houri"". Sir Robert was known for his lapses into prolix, however, so the description is no doubt exaggerated, and in any event Sir Robert's widow thereafter denied he had ever made the statement. When Sir Robert returned two years later to the site with a salvage crew in the hope of recovering more of the sunken tea, he discovered to his horror that the wreck had disappeared, twice a victim of the oceanic quagmire of the Sargasso. Contemporaries of Sir Robert describe him as becoming withdrawn and sullen following this episode, and it is true that he retired from public life and never undertook another exploratory adventure again, dying a mere 5 years later in a freak accident involving a corset, a broom closet and a large riding crop.

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