Consider Phlebitis

Boiled frogs. More bloody boiled frogs.
Phlebitis hated boiled frogs more than he hated his name, and more than he hated the mother who had given him his name. Yet the boiled frogs were considered a delicacy in the Meliphasic isles and they traveled well, so every summer Phlebitis spent four months sailing back and forth across the stretch of water that was called the Meliphasic Sea on one side and Big-Wet-Salty on the other. He had to boil the frogs himself, en route, because the frog farmers believed that their frogs were sacred. He'd tried asking them to boil the frogs and they'd almost refused to trade with him any more. He'd not wanted to risk boiling the frogs on the beach in front of them after that.
So, he constructed large iron barrels that were raised slightly off the deck and the frogs were put into spring water in the barrels so that the frog farmers were happy they were being cared for and respected. If they'd got their language far enough to describe love they'd probably have insisted that Phlebitis love the frogs too. Once they'd set off, Phlebitis would clip his nose shut and light the fires beneath the barrels, and the frogs would boil from noon until sunset.
The Meliphasts would trade trinkets for the boiled frogs; trinkets that they either carved from local jade or amber, or sculpted from a kind of white rock they made beneath the banks of willow trees. The amber and jade fetched prices that would astonish (and enrage) the Meliphasts, especially considering they got barely a bucket of boiled frogs for each little objet d'art, but the sculpted white rock was in even higher demand. It dissolved easily in water and could be administered to cure fevers, mental weakness and a host of other things besides. And of course, the Meliphasts considered the white rock sacred, so they wouldn't increase production of it, explain how they produced it, or sell it in anything other than elaborate carvings that took months to create.
"Can't you carve me little discs, perhaps with a symbol engraved in it?" Phlebitis had asked. "The letter E, for example?"
The Meliphasts were slightly less angry than the frog farmers had been but Phlebitis had still twisted both his ankles trying to get away from them and back to the relative safety of his ship.
And so, he had a sea-voyage back to sensible, enlightened lands where he was trying to keep precious white-rock statues from dissolving in the wet atmosphere, waves and rain so that his profits didn't run into the sea and cure headaches in all the fish.
For now though, he was on his way to the Meliphasic isles and the stench of boiled frogs seemed to both pre- and suc-ceed his ship so that he was forever moving in a miasma of amphibian stink. The cook, a short ugly man whose mother had apparently called him Adonis in a show of irony so large that the Gods were still discussing who had priority for striking her down, had just told Phlebitis that they were out of meat, unless he counted the boiled frogs. Phlebitis, his head in his hands, had sent him to do just that while he tried to find out if they'd ever stocked a net or fishing lines on the boat. It was, he felt, an omen, a sign that this voyage was not going to be one of the wildly successful ones like the one where a giant squid had attacked them just hours out of harbour, and they'd pretty much just dragged it ashore losing only four men and a mast in the process.
Boiled frogs. He hated boiled frogs.