Here is a wholly random question. When and where was William Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet first performed on shipboard?  

The first recorded shipboard performance of Hamlet, and one of the earlier performances anywhere, was in September 1607 on the East India Company ship, Red Dragon under the command of Captain William Keeling on a voyage to the Spice Islands. The ship was anchored off Sierra Leone to allow the crew to recover from a serious outbreak of scurvy. Captain Keeling was an enthusiastic follower of Shakespeare’s plays. From Shakespeare’s World: 

During their recovery, the captain put his crew on a diet of citrus fruits and allowed performances of Shakespeare’s plays for entertainment. Earlier in September 1607. Hamlet was performed aboard the Red Dragon. Keeling recorded in his diary:

We had the Tragedy of Hamlet: and in the afternoon we went altogether ashore, to see if we could shoot an elephant.

A few weeks later, Shakespeare’s Richard II was performed on board the Red Dragon, and on 3 March 1608, when the ship was anchored off the coast of Yemen the following year, Keeling wrote:

I invited Captain Hawkins to a fish dinner and had Hamlet acted aboard me, which I permit to keep my people from idleness and unlawful games, or sleep.

In Hamlet, drama of another sort occurs on board a ship when Hamlet is taken prisoner by ‘a pirate of very warlike appointment’. In Act 4 Scene 6, Horatio hears that some sailors have arrived at Elsinore with letters for him, and he soon finds out the sailors have been sent to him from Hamlet. Horatio reads of a dangerous encounter on the seas between the pirate and the Danish ship carrying Hamlet to England. No doubt the crew of the Red Dragon would have been equally interested in this encounter as they performed the play while anchored off the coast of Sierra Leone in 1607.