The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! passenger Charles Darwin. Darwin recognises the crew's pet Polly as the last living dodo, and recommends they enter it in the Scientist of the Year competition at the Royal Society of London for a valuable prize. Secretly, Darwin plans on stealing Polly himself with the help of his trained chimpanzee, Mr. Bobo, as to impress his love interest Queen Victoria. The pirates disguise themselves as scientists to enter the competition, and the dodo display wins the top prize, which turns out to be minuscule trinkets and a meeting with the Queen. The Pirate Captain hides Polly before the meeting. There,
Quite an Adventure his Savoy operas with curtain raisers such as "Quite an Adventure". W. J. MacQueen-Pope commented, concerning such curtain raisers: "Quite an Adventure" was first produced on tour in the English provinces by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company as a curtain raiser for "H.M.S. Pinafore". The London premiere was at the Olympic Theatre on 7 September 1881, under the management of Michael Gunn, as a companion piece for Solomon's operetta "Claude Duval." It ran until the end of October 1881. D'Oyly Carte again toured the piece in tandem with "Patience" in 1881, and with "Pinafore" and "The Pirates of Penzance" in