Shipwreck whisky

Shipwreck Whisky. ⚓️ No, not a brand name but a term for old and rare whisky rescued or scavenged from shipwrecks. It’s rare to find, but it’s worth a fortune!

SS Politician 🐟

Cargo: 22,000 cases of Scotch whisky and £3m worth of Jamaican banknotes.

SS Politician was a cargo ship that traded between Britain, the USA and Canada. It ran aground just off the coast of the Hebridean island of Eriskay in February 1941.

The crew were rescued and hosted for the night by local families, but they made a fatal error in divulging the nature of their cargo.

The following day the crew returned to the site to discover that some of the whisky had been ‘recovered’ by the islanders. As duty had not been paid, HM Customs and Excise pursued and prosecuted those who had removed the cargo – several were fined and 19 people were eventually jailed. Salvage experts removed the remainder of the whisky and in 1942, the hold was blown up and all the remaining stock destroyed.

One of the islanders, Compton MacKenzie, wrote a novel, Whisky Galore, about the experience, which was made into a film in 1949 and then re-made in 2016.

Value: At auction these bottles have fetched up to £12,000 each.

SS Wallachia 🐠

Cargo: Whisky, gin, beer, and industrial acid.

SS Wallachia was a steamship that sank in the Firth of Clyde in 1895 en-route to Trinidad. After encountering thick fog, it collided with a Norwegian steamer and sunk within 20 minutes. Thankfully, the entire crew escaped unharmed.

She lay 100ft underwater for almost a century before divers from the Girvan Sub Aqua Divers Club found her in 1977. Much of the whisky had been contaminated by acid, but bottles of Robert Brown’s Four Crowns whisky, and decanters of Wilkinson’s Famous Liqueur Whisky that were stored deeper in the cargo hold escaped unharmed. Today, the wreck remains a popular dive site.

Value: Bottles sell for up to £1000. In March 2023, several bottles and a rare decanter were sold at auction for £3,200.

The Westmoreland 🐬

Cargo: 280 barrels of whiskey and $20m gold coins.

The Westmoreland was lost during a storm in Lake Michigan in December 1854, taking 17 of its crew; 17 crew members survived and managed to swim ashore.

It was rediscovered by famous shipwreck hunter, Ross Richardson in 2010. After several years of searching using maps and historic accounts, Richardson turned to newly available scanning technology and finally found her almost 200 feet below the water’s surface.

It took a decade to obtain the permits and financial backing to explore it but in doing so, whiskey barrels were discovered lying around the wreck however the majority of barrels remain secured in the cargo hold. Richardson hopes that salvage operations will begin within 5 years.

Value: Unknown; but experts believe the casks could be worth millions.

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