SS Politician
Encyclopedia
The 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 near the island 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!.
, 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 ship
s were built in 1922-3 to have a length of 450 in 6 in (137.31 m) and beam 58 feet (17.7 m), to gross 8000 long tons (8,128.4 t) and achieve 14 kn (17 mph; 27.4 km/h). 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
.
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 "Polly" 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 malt before winter weather broke up the ship. The men wore their womenfolk'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 the outright thievery that he saw 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 croft
s turned upside down. Bottles were hidden, secreted, or simply drunk in order to hide the evidence.
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 the 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!"
remained very unforthcoming about the incident, the cargo and the salvage. The majority of its hold was taken up by the whisky, but there was also an assortment of other cargo ranging from baths, plumbing fittings, pianos, art silks, motor parts, bedding, furniture, food and bank notes for Jamaica.
Recently released Public Records Office files show that it was also carrying nearly 290,000 ten-shilling notes (145,000 pounds), which would be worth the equivalent of several million pounds at current exchange rates. (To give an idea of how much that was worth, a corporal on full pay in the British Army
received 35 shillings a week). The British government hoped that they would not get into circulation, but they started turning up at banks all around the world. Some sources suggest that these supplies were being sent to the colonies in case there was need of evacuation in the war.
As soon as the weather allowed, Eriskay was besieged with customs officials, insurance agents and legitimate salvage companies. It is reported that the custom officials were not well received and one agent was refused accommodation by most of the townsfolk.
In April 1941 Captain E Lauriston, who was in charge of the operation, claimed that the bank notes had turned up in Benbecula
, 25 miles north of the wreck. The salvage
company stated:
In a memorandum, the Crown Agents noted:
Suspicions only began to rise when an empty cash case was found abandoned in the hold of the ship. By June, the bank notes from the SS Politician were turning up in branches as far away as Liverpool. By mid July, a hundred or so had been tendered in Jamaica and almost two hundred in Britain.
By 1958, the Crown Agents reported that 211,267 notes had been recovered by the salvage company and the police and had been destroyed. A further 2,329 had been presented in banks in England, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, Malta, Canada, the US and Jamaica. Only 1,509 were thought to have been presented in good faith. That still leaves 76,404 banknotes which have never been accounted for. Their fate remains a mystery.
The wreck of the SS Politician still lies off the coast of Eriskay, although it is below water line now as the winter gales destroyed the deck and cabins. In 1988 the island got its own ‘legitimate’ pub, named Am Politician ("The Politician" in Gaelic).
'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:
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. Some of the whisky was blended and bottled by SS Politician plc.
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
on 3 February 1941, bound for Kingston
Kingston, Jamaica
Kingston is the capital and largest city of Jamaica, located on the southeastern coast of the island. It faces a natural harbour protected by the Palisadoes, a long sand spit which connects the town of Port Royal and the Norman Manley International Airport to the rest of the island...
, Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
and New Orleans with a cargo including 28,000 cases of malt whisky
Malt whisky
Malt whisky is whisky that is made from a fermented mash produced primarily from a malted grain. Unless otherwise specified, it is generally assumed that the primary grain is barley, although whisky is also made using malted rye...
. The ship sank near the island of Eriskay
Eriskay
Eriskay , from the Old Norse for "Eric's Isle", is an island and community council area of the Outer Hebrides in northern Scotland. It lies between South Uist and Barra and is connected to South Uist by a causeway which was opened in 2001. In the same year Eriskay became the ferry terminal for...
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!.
Origin
The ship was only called Politician after 1935, after she was purchased by T & J Harrison from Furness, Withy and Co.Furness Withy
Furness Withy was a major British transport business. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange.-History:The Company was founded by Christopher Furness and Henry Withy in 1891 in Hartlepool. This was achieved by the amalgamation of the Furness Line of steamers with the business of Edward Withy and...
, 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
Steam turbine
A steam turbine is a mechanical device that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam, and converts it into rotary motion. Its modern manifestation was invented by Sir Charles Parsons in 1884....
-engined sister ship
Sister ship
A sister ship is a ship of the same class as, or of virtually identical design to, another ship. Such vessels share a near-identical hull and superstructure layout, similar displacement, and roughly comparable features and equipment...
s were built in 1922-3 to have a length of 450 in 6 in (137.31 m) and beam 58 feet (17.7 m), to gross 8000 long tons (8,128.4 t) and achieve 14 kn (17 mph; 27.4 km/h). 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
Swan Hunter
Swan Hunter, formerly known as "Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson", was one of the best known shipbuilding companies in the world. Based in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, the company was responsible for some of the greatest ships of the early 20th century — most famously, the RMS Mauretania which...
in 1899, which was bought by Christian Salvesen in 1922, renamed Coronda and used from 1940-5 as a store ship on the Tyne
River Tyne
The River Tyne is a river in North East England in Great Britain. It is formed by the confluence of two rivers: the North Tyne and the South Tyne. These two rivers converge at Warden Rock near Hexham in Northumberland at a place dubbed 'The Meeting of the Waters'.The North Tyne rises on the...
.
History
On 5 February 1941, during gale force winds, she ran aground off the Island of EriskayEriskay
Eriskay , from the Old Norse for "Eric's Isle", is an island and community council area of the Outer Hebrides in northern Scotland. It lies between South Uist and Barra and is connected to South Uist by a causeway which was opened in 2001. In the same year Eriskay became the ferry terminal for...
in the Outer Hebrides
Outer Hebrides
The Outer Hebrides also known as the Western Isles and the Long Island, is an island chain off the west coast of Scotland. The islands are geographically contiguous with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, one of the 32 unitary council areas of Scotland...
and later broke in two near the islet
Islet
An islet is a very small island.- Types :As suggested by its origin as islette, an Old French diminutive of "isle", use of the term implies small size, but little attention is given to drawing an upper limit on its applicability....
of Calvay
Calvay
Calvay , is an uninhabited island situated in the Sound of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides.It was here that the ship SS Politician ran aground with a cargo of whisky in 1941 and inadvertently provided the inspiration for Compton MacKenzie's 1947 novel Whiskey Galore.-Other uses:A second island of the...
. The crew were all unharmed and were looked after by the locals for a while.
When the locals learned from the crew of the "Polly" what the ship was carrying, a series of illegal, and later well-organised salvage operations took place at night, before the customs and excise
Her Majesty's Customs and Excise
HM Customs and Excise was, until April 2005, a department of the British Government in the UK. It was responsible for the collection of Value added tax , Customs Duties, Excise Duties, and other indirect taxes such as Air Passenger Duty, Climate Change Levy, Insurance Premium Tax, Landfill Tax and...
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 malt before winter weather broke up the ship. The men wore their womenfolk'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
Lewis
Lewis is the northern part of Lewis and Harris, the largest island of the Western Isles or Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The total area of Lewis is ....
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 the outright thievery that he saw 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 croft
Croft (land)
A croft is a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable with a crofter's dwelling thereon. A crofter is one who has tenure and use of the land, typically as a tenant farmer.- Etymology :...
s 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 LochmaddyLochmaddy
Lochmaddy is the administrative centre of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland...
Sheriff
Sheriff
A sheriff is in principle a legal official with responsibility for a county. In practice, the specific combination of legal, political, and ceremonial duties of a sheriff varies greatly from country to country....
Court, a group of men from Barra
Barra
The island of Barra is a predominantly Gaelic-speaking island, and apart from the adjacent island of Vatersay, to which it is connected by a causeway, is the southernmost inhabited island of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland.-Geography:The 2001 census showed that the resident population was 1,078...
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
Inverness
Inverness is a city in the Scottish Highlands. It is the administrative centre for the Highland council area, and is regarded as the capital of the Highlands of Scotland...
and Peterhead
Peterhead
Peterhead is a town in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It is Aberdeenshire's biggest settlement , with a population of 17,947 at the 2001 Census and estimated to have fallen to 17,330 by 2006....
At sea, salvage attempts did not go well, and it was eventually decided to let the 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!"
Bank notes
At the time, the CrownThe Crown
The Crown is a corporation sole that in the Commonwealth realms and any provincial or state sub-divisions thereof represents the legal embodiment of governance, whether executive, legislative, or judicial...
remained very unforthcoming about the incident, the cargo and the salvage. The majority of its hold was taken up by the whisky, but there was also an assortment of other cargo ranging from baths, plumbing fittings, pianos, art silks, motor parts, bedding, furniture, food and bank notes for Jamaica.
Recently released Public Records Office files show that it was also carrying nearly 290,000 ten-shilling notes (145,000 pounds), which would be worth the equivalent of several million pounds at current exchange rates. (To give an idea of how much that was worth, a corporal on full pay in the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
received 35 shillings a week). The British government hoped that they would not get into circulation, but they started turning up at banks all around the world. Some sources suggest that these supplies were being sent to the colonies in case there was need of evacuation in the war.
As soon as the weather allowed, Eriskay was besieged with customs officials, insurance agents and legitimate salvage companies. It is reported that the custom officials were not well received and one agent was refused accommodation by most of the townsfolk.
In April 1941 Captain E Lauriston, who was in charge of the operation, claimed that the bank notes had turned up in Benbecula
Benbecula
Benbecula is an island of the Outer Hebrides in the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Scotland. In the 2001 census it had a usually resident population of 1,249, with a sizable percentage of Roman Catholics. It forms part of the area administered by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar or the Western...
, 25 miles north of the wreck. The salvage
Marine salvage
Marine salvage is the process of rescuing a ship, its cargo, or other property from peril. Salvage encompasses rescue towing, refloating a sunken or grounded vessel, or patching or repairing a ship...
company stated:
It is reported that some of the children on the island have been playing with them and the locals, most of whom are known to be incriminated in the looting, are too wily to give anything away.
In a memorandum, the Crown Agents noted:
The local police service is in no doubt on a very, very small scale but the nature of the place and its surroundings should tend to reduce the chances of serious loss through the notes being presented and paid.
Suspicions only began to rise when an empty cash case was found abandoned in the hold of the ship. By June, the bank notes from the SS Politician were turning up in branches as far away as Liverpool. By mid July, a hundred or so had been tendered in Jamaica and almost two hundred in Britain.
By 1958, the Crown Agents reported that 211,267 notes had been recovered by the salvage company and the police and had been destroyed. A further 2,329 had been presented in banks in England, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, Malta, Canada, the US and Jamaica. Only 1,509 were thought to have been presented in good faith. That still leaves 76,404 banknotes which have never been accounted for. Their fate remains a mystery.
The wreck of the SS Politician still lies off the coast of Eriskay, although it is below water line now as the winter gales destroyed the deck and cabins. In 1988 the island got its own ‘legitimate’ pub, named Am Politician ("The Politician" in Gaelic).
SS Politician in popular culture
The story of the shipwreck inspired the Compton MackenzieCompton Mackenzie
Sir Compton Mackenzie, OBE was a writer and a Scottish nationalist.-Background:Compton Mackenzie was born in West Hartlepool, England, into a theatrical family of Mackenzies, but many of whose members used Compton as their stage surname, starting with his grandfather Henry Compton, a well-known...
's 1947 novel Whisky Galore which was made into an Ealing Comedy film
Whisky Galore! (film)
Whisky Galore! was a 1949 Ealing comedy film based on the novel of the same name by Compton MacKenzie. Both the movie and the novel are based on the real-life 1941 shipwreck of the S.S. Politician near the island of Eriskay and the unauthorized taking of its cargo of whisky...
in 1949.
A "Poem of the S. S. Politician" is attributed to Angus Mcintyre, Tobermory.
Oi Polloi
Oi Polloi
Oi Polloi are an anarcho-punk band from Scotland that formed around 1981. Starting as an Oi! band, they are generally associated more with the anarcho-punk genre. More recently the band have become notable for their contributions to the Scottish Gaelic punk subgenre...
wrote a song about this ship on their album Ar Ceòl Ar Cànan Ar-A-Mach.
Two books have been written detailing the history:
- Scotch On The Rocks : The True Story Behind Whisky Galore, Arthur Swinson, 1963 & 2005
- Polly: The True Story Behind Whisky Galore, Roger Hutchinson, Mainstream Publishing, 1990 + 1998
Recent history
In 1987 Donald MacPhee, a local South UistSouth Uist
South Uist is an island of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. In the 2001 census it had a usually resident population of 1,818. There is a nature reserve and a number of sites of archaeological interest, including the only location in Great Britain where prehistoric mummies have been found. The...
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. Some of the whisky was blended and bottled by SS Politician plc.