On the evening of February 5, 1941, a ship named S.S. The Freighter politician, in the Hebridean Islands off the west coast of Scotland, ran into a high wind on the north shore of a small island called Eriskay. There were 28,000 boxes of smuggled whisky of all kinds, totaling 264,000 bottles, on board the freighter. The whiskey and various supplies on the freighter were subsequently looted by the inhabitants of the Hebrides and left little.
This history was first adapted by the famous Scottish writer Compton MacKenzie (1907–1971) into a very famous novel, Whisky Galore . The novel was then adapted into a film twice, released in 1949 and 2016. For more details on this history, please poke here for "What Will The World Be Like Without Whiskey?" 》。
It is said that as early as 1970, the wreck whisky of the Chancellor was salvaged ashore. Then, in 1987, a man named Donald MacPhee sneaked into the waters off Elrisky Island and successfully recovered the wreck of the Chancellor, from which eight bottles of whiskey were found and salvaged. The eight bottles of whisky were then auctioned for £4,000 at Christie's in Edinburgh. Two of the eight bottles were auctioned by a man from Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. After the man's death, his widow wanted to sell the two bottles. Subsequently, in an auction on the Scotch Whisky Auctions website in 2013, the two bottles were auctioned off for £12,050.
Also in 1987, a man named George Currie (GC) was running a diving service company, Currie Brothers Limited. That year, his company received a project to lay and repair submarine cables to orkney and Shetland. There were five people working together, as shown in the picture: GC on the left in the front row, Alan Thomson in the front row on the right, Brian Foreman on the left in the back row, George Grieve in the back row, and Derek Pinnington in the back row right. Working in the waters off Elliske Island, they planned to try to find the wreck of the Chancellor and try to find the whiskey in the wreck. Luckily, they ended up finding the shipwreck and found 5 bottles of whiskey. GC found one himself, his colleague George Grieve found one, and Brian Foreman found three.
In October 1989, a company called Churchill Baron Financial Services of Glasgow launched a project to salvage the wreck of the Chancellor and set up a company called SS Politician plc, headed by Jeremy Brough. Funding for the project was crowdfunded by more than 500 individual investors and raised around £400,000. However, after much effort, the project eventually found only 24 bottles of whiskey, and only exchanged 12,000 pounds, and the individual investors involved in the project only received about 24 pounds each, which can be described as nothing. To appease investor sentiment, in 1990 Jeremy Brough decided to produce a blended whisky called Whisky Galore The S.S. Politician, adding some whisky salvaged from the Chancellor's shipwreck, though it did not say exactly how much was added and how much "shipwreck whisky" was included in each bottle. The blend produced 4,600 bottles of blended whisky, all housed in delicate crystal bottles and beautifully packaged, at a price of £195 at the time. However, sales of this blended whisky were so dismal that SS Politician plc eventually declared bankruptcy. Although this blended whisky can still be seen in the auction market from time to time today, its sales are mediocre, it does not sell too high, and even most of the time it is difficult to exceed its offering price 30 years ago.
Although in recent years, one or two bottles of Chancellor shipwreck whisky have occasionally been found on Elliskäu Island and on the beaches by the sea. But overall, over time, more of the Chancellor's shipwreck whiskies are less and less likely to be discovered. However, we can see occasional appearances of the Chancellor shipwreck whisky in the auction market. The most recent was an auction held by online auction site The Grand Whisky Auction (GWA) in July 2020. At this auction, a bottle of Chancellor's shipwreck whisky appeared, the same bottle described above that was found by the GC on the seabed in 1987.
It is said that the whiskies carried on the Chancellor at that time included Brands such as Gilbey's, Ballantine's and VAT 69, but the whiskies salvaged from the Chancellor shipwreck were basically gone, and the bottle at GWA auction was no exception. Because it is really difficult to identify the specific brand, GWA did not rush to give this bottle of whisky brand, so we only know that it comes from the Chancellor.
Also auctioned were the diving helmets used by GC to salvage the bottle of wine, as well as a poster for the original Desert Island Wine Pool (2016 edition), along with two bricks that GC had also salvaged from the chancellor shipwreck that year, and these items were auctioned as a lot. As you can see, buying whiskey to send bricks, this is really unprecedented, it is estimated that there is no one after. However, although the "big gift" of the bricks was included, the GC set the reserve price of the sale to be 9,000 pounds, and the highest bid price at the end of the auction was 8,500 pounds, so in the end the bottle of whisky was only a few hundred pounds away and failed to sell.
Originally, GC was expected to use the proceeds from the bottle auction to buy a computer for his grandson, who is in college, and then take his lover on a cruise trip to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. It was not surprising that the wine did not sell, so GC and GWA decided to let the bottle of whisky "go out" again, that is, to be auctioned again at the GWA auction in August. However, I don't know if the reserve price of the transaction has been lowered this time, as of press time, the bidding price of this wine has reached 6,000 pounds, but it has not yet reached the reserve price, which means that the reserve price of this auction is higher than that of 6,000 pounds. The auction will end in the early hours of tomorrow morning, at 03:00 Beijing time on August 11, 2020. It should be reminded that according to the GMA website, this bottle of wine may not be suitable for drinking, so the GMA recommends that bidders who get this wine do not drink it. Therefore, buying this bottle of wine may only buy a historical testimony, and not be able to taste the real history. So, will anyone bid for this historical testimony? Tomorrow you'll see you, so if you're interested, you can take a look. Of course, it is not excluded that the bottle of wine has not yet been sold at this auction, and GWA will continue to hang it up for auction until it is sold. We'll see how.
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