I wouldn't sail this ship if I were you
1. The hats of your mortal enemies, turned inside-out and used as flowerpots.
2. A soft woolly hat that itches at the back of the head, to be put on after a night of no sleep, so that your head can feel the same on the inside and the outside. It has a bobble on top that is unsettlingly large.
3. A hat made of thoughts, woven together by master bullshitters, and containing only the finest notions; thoughts thought by Einstein and Newton; the thoughts of Beethoven prior to writing his ninth symphony; Austen’s thoughts as she put pen to paper for the first line of Pride and Prejudice. The hat is invisible. As thoughts cannot be absorbed through the skull, it has no effect whatsoever on the mental capacity of the wearer.
4. The hat that some aunt or uncle or someone threw up in, years ago, and from which the smell can never be quite erased; but you keep it anyway because it was expensive.
5. A shabby top hat, said to be from the Victorian era, which occasionally disgorges a set of silk scarves, a rabbit, an old watch, or a glove. Occasionally, in the dead of night, it has been known to spit out despairing messages written on old playbills; but these days the hat’s owner burns them without reading the contents.
6. Slightly-too-big hats that have never been worn, but that make great cat beds.
7. A hat consisting of a black headband with a number of telescopic stilts attached, on which can be mounted a large, off-colour lens through which the sun casts an unpleasant light. To be worn to the wedding of people one dislikes.
8. Sorry about the eighth hat. I won’t say anything if you don’t.