Ernest Shackleton probably never thought he’d have a whisky named after him. He is well-known for his famous and ill-fated 1914-1917 Endurance expedition to explore Antarctica. He and his crew were forced to abandon ship when the Endurance became trapped in the ice. What followed was a harrowing period in which most of the crew struggled to survive in one spot for nearly 2 years, while Shackleton and a couple of others went in pursuit of rescue.
He did eventually find the aid he sought, and miraculously, nearly everyone survived the ordeal and returned home. This was his 3rd expedition to the Antarctic. His second was the 1907-1909 Nimrod expedition in which the whisky of our story was found. His life ended by heart attack in 1922, while trying to make one last expedition to the southernmost continent, and was buried in South Georgia, the part of the world that fascinated him so much.
Nearly a century after Shackleton’s end, archaeologists found something very unexpected underneath the floorboards of the hut, which used to be his base camp for the Nimrod expedition –several bottles of Scotch whisky. The MacKinlay scotch was originally bottled in 1898, after being aged for 15 years, according to the CBC. Needless to say, it’s aged a lot more since then.
It was found with three cases of scotch and two cases of brandy, left under the floor of the hut at Cape Royds, where the explorer was forced to leave them behind.
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