Peabody's Improbable History (TV Series) Captain Matthew Clift (1960) User Reviews

Captain Matthew Webb is such an embarrassing figure . . .

[pixrox1 · 8/10 · 17 January 2024]

. . . in English history that his Name of Infamy had to be changed for this episode of Peabody's Improbable History, lest the Brits declared War on America and returned some of the nukes we lent them to New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. The renamed CAPTAIN MATTHEW CLIFTON was an infamous drunkard who quit a perfectly safe sea captain job for a decade of ice water baths in the English Channel and anywhere else that tolerated his heavy drinking. As pictured here, Webb DID consume a spot of beef tea, but the Bullwinkle Show producers spared young, impressionable viewers the deplorable sight of Webb getting totally plastered by filling himself to the gills with brandy and beer. After this Aug. 24, 1875 debacle, Webb is estimated to have imbibed 8,760 pints and 29,600 shots "on the house" from stopping by every pub in the British Empire multiple times to "soak up" the misplaced adulation for his inebriated feat. This severe alcoholism finally caught up with the aging soak at Niagara Falls, in which he drowned on July 24, 1883. Because he was no longer a Hero of the Empire, he had to be buried in a pauper's grave in the American state of New York.