Emma Cruises Mascot Captain Hudson Has Raised Another £17,781 ($22k) For Mercy Ships!

It was less than a year ago that the first Captain Hudson toy was created. I never imagined the success that would come but there are now 4,894 Captain Hudson’s in the world.

All profits from Captain Hudson have been donated to Mercy Ships which are a brilliant charity that operates hospital ships. Our fundraising total is at £46,104 ($58k)!!

I can never say thank you enough if you have been part of this, it’s blown my mind. There are now three versions of Captain Hudson, seen below:

Captain Hudson certainly is a well-travelled (and well-loved) cat.

Why Mercy Ships?

I’d heard about the charity Mercy Ships on a podcast and thought that they did amazing work, I wanted to come up with a way for people to be able to donate to the charity while also getting something in return that they could take on their trips with them.

Mercy Ships sail to places that need medical care and provide it free of charge. The ships are AMAZING, they have full operating theatres and wards, everything, they’re floating hospitals.

By this point, I’d already been creating cruise content for around 5 years and loved the community that we had built. We were always sharing photos and I thought a mascot would be a nice way to bring us all together.

Captain Hudson was inspired by my cat Hudson who often joins us on my YouTube live streams.

Captain Hudson Version 1 Was a MASSIVE Surprise

The Captain Hudsons are made through a Canadian company and I needed at least 300 orders for the batch to be made. I wasn’t sure if we would make that but hoped that we would.

We ended up selling over 1300 and raising a MASSIVE £9401 for Mercy Ships, that’s roughly $12k.

I was so nervous at this point. I had my sample which looked fantastic but I had no idea if the rest of the Captain Hudsons would arrive at the same quality. Imagine if I convinced over 1000 people to order something that wasn’t good? That would have been AWFUL.

Luckily I didn’t have to worry and people started falling in love with Hudson as soon as he arrived.

We now have a website set up for sightings of Hudson, it makes me so happy to see where he’s been and what he’s been doing.

I think he’s cruised with every cruise line now and been all over the world.

Captain Hudson 2 and 3 Was an Even Bigger Success!

The way that it worked was that I would collect the orders and then they’d all be handmade and shipped out. That meant that I could only open the sales window for a couple of weeks and then they’d take around 6 weeks to arrive.

At first, I was nervous that people wouldn’t like this but it’s worked very well, it makes him exclusive I suppose and each version is different.

Captain Hudsons won’t ever be repeated and there are already lots of people with the full collection.

For version 2 I decided to add a little lifejacket, inspired by a couple of people who bought their own little lifejackets for Captain Hudson!

We sold a whopping 1600 of version 2 and raised £18,922 ($24k).

I was definitely surprised by that, I thought that everybody that would want a Captain Hudson would already have one… but nope! We sold just as many of version 3 too.

Our Donations Were Matched by a Mystery Donator!

I have no idea who it is but Mercy Ships have a fantastic person who is matching all of the donations given to them until the end of the year.

I didn’t expect them to match our donations but they did match the donation of version 2 and version 3.

In total from these two, we raised £36,703 which was matched to £73,406. THAT’S 92 THOUSAND US DOLLARS. I have no words for that.

The donations will not just improve lives but will save them, Mercy Ships provide life-saving treatments and they do a lot of training too to make sure that their knowledge can help more people.

I can’t believe that a little toy version of a cat could do something like that, I am so so proud of our community.

A MASSIVE Thank You

I’d like to say a massive thank you, not just to everybody who has bought their own Captain Hudson but to everybody who has ever commented on seeing him in my videos, liked a photo that somebody else has shared of him, anything at all.

Will We Raise Even More With Version 4? Maybe!

Version 4 will be coming out soon and will only be available to buy for a few weeks ago, please make sure that if you would like your own you’re on our waitlist so I can email you when he is ready to buy.