Captain Trippet was an ex-merchant marine who was part of the human colony on Olympus in Martian Dreams. A bleary-eyed fellow, Trippet revealed to the Avatar that he was recruited by Percival Lowell to operate the canal barges, but with no water source for the dried-up canals, his job mostly consisted of sitting around. He knew the locations of the martian barges and which among them had cannons installed. He also said to ask Admiral Robert E. Peary, who had just returned from exploring the martian North Pole, if he might have discovered a system during his exploration that could refill the canals.