Launched c.1922 Type cargo ship | Fate Grounded 1941 Length 137 m | |
 | ||
Name London Merchant (–1935)Politician (1935–1941) Owner Furness, Withy and Co. (–1935)T & J Harrison (1935–1941) Tonnage 8,000 long tons (8,100 t) Builder Offshore Structures (Britain) Ltd. | ||
Diving the ss politician
SS Politician was an 8000-ton cargo ship owned by T & J Harrison of Liverpool. It left Liverpool on 3 February 1941, bound for Kingston, Jamaica and New Orleans with a cargo including 28,000 cases of malt whisky. The ship sank off the north coast of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland, and much of the wreck's cargo was salvaged by the island's inhabitants. The story of the wreck and looting was the basis for the book and film Whisky Galore!.
Contents
- Diving the ss politician
- Joe macaskill ss politician postscript
- Origin
- History
- Trials
- SS Politician in popular culture
- Recent history
- References
Joe macaskill ss politician postscript
Origin
The ship was called Politician only after 1935, when she was purchased by T & J Harrison from Furness, Withy and Co., who had called her London Merchant. In the same transaction, the vessels Royal Prince, Imperial Prince and British Prince became Collegian, Craftsman and Statesman respectively. All four turbine-engined sister ships were built in 1922-3 to have a length of 450 feet 6 inches (137.31 m) and beam 58 feet (18 m), gross 8,000 long tons (8,100 t) and achieve 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph). Built for the Furness London-New York route, Harrisons employed them to South Africa in peacetime.
Harrisons had previously owned another Politician, built by Swan Hunter in 1899, which was bought by Christian Salvesen in 1922, renamed Coronda and used from 1940-5 as a store ship on the Tyne.
History
On 5 February 1941, during gale force winds, she ran aground off the Island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides and later broke in two near the islet of Calvay. The crew were all unharmed and were looked after by the locals for a while.
When the locals learned from the crew of the Politician what the ship was carrying, a series of illegal, and later well-organised salvage operations took place at night, before the customs and excise officials arrived. The island's supplies of whisky had dried up due to war-time rationing, so the islanders periodically helped themselves to some of the 28,000 cases (264,000 bottles) of Scotch whisky before winter weather broke up the ship. The men wore women's dresses on their "fishing trips", to keep their own clothes from being covered in incriminating oil from the ship's holds. Boats came from as far away as Lewis as news of the whisky spread across the Hebrides. No islander regarded it as stealing; for them the rules of salvage meant that once the bounty was in the sea, it was theirs to rescue.
This was not the view of the local customs officer. Charles McColl was incensed at what he saw as outright thievery going on. None of the whisky had paid a penny of duty, and he railed against this loss to the public purse. McColl whipped up a furore and made the police act. Villages were raided and crofts turned upside down. Bottles were hidden, secreted, or simply drunk in order to hide the evidence.
Trials
McColl and the police caught plenty of locals red-handed, and they were sent to trial. On 26 April at Lochmaddy Sheriff Court, a group of men from Barra pleaded guilty to theft and were charged between three and five pounds. McColl was beside himself at the leniency of the sentence, but the police (being largely locals themselves) were tired of harassing the locals who had not, in their minds, done such a bad thing.
But McColl continued on his crusade, and more men did appear in court, some of whom were sentenced to up to six weeks imprisonment in Inverness and Peterhead.
At sea, salvage attempts did not go well, and it was eventually decided to let Politician remain where she was. McColl, who had already estimated that the islanders had purloined 24,000 bottles of whisky, ensured that there would be no more temptation. He applied for, and was granted, permission to explode her hull.
The islanders watched this extraordinary action, their emotions summed up by Angus John Campbell, who commented, "Dynamiting whisky. You wouldn't think there'd be men in the world so crazy as that!"
SS Politician in popular culture
The story of the shipwreck inspired the Compton Mackenzie's 1947 novel Whisky Galore which was made into an Ealing Comedy film in 1949.
A "Poem of the S.S Politician" is attributed to Angus Mcintyre, Tobermory.
Oi Polloi wrote a song about this ship on their album Ar Ceòl Ar Cànan Ar-A-Mach.
Two books have been written detailing the history:
Recent history
In 1987 Donald MacPhee, a local South Uist man, found eight bottles of whisky in the wreck; he sold them at Christies' auction for £4,000.
In October 1989 a salvage company, SS Politician plc, was founded by Churchill Baron Financial Services of Glasgow, with Jeremy Brough as company chairman. About £400,000 was invested by more than 500 people, but moving hundreds of tons of sand and steel plates only uncovered 24 more bottles, thereby creating a notional rate of return of £16,667/bottle. Some of the whisky was blended and bottled by SS Politician plc.
In 2013 two of the original eight bottles of whisky salvaged in 1987 by Donald MacPhee, sold for £12,050 after an online auction. Scotch Whisky Auctions, which sold the bottles, said they had gone to a buyer in the UK after worldwide interest.