Webner House

I enjoy the unusual news stories you see from time to time, like this one:  it turns out that, during explorer Ernest Shackleton’s unsuccessful expedition to reach the South Pole between 1907 and 1909, he buried two crates of scotch whiskey in the ice beneath his headquarters hut.  When the expedition was abandoned, the scotch was left there for 100 years.  It was discovered three years ago, and now they are getting ready to extract the crates from the ice.  The distiller of the scotch is interested in getting a sample to see how it was blended and whether the blend can be recreated.

All of this is very interesting, but what is most interesting is that explorers looking to reach the South Pole, in an expedition where every ounce of material had to be transported over miles of frigid, desolate wasteland, nevertheless took two crates of booze.  That fact is somewhat telling, because the expedition ran out of supplies only 100 miles from the Pole.  If they had taken two more crates of food or other necessaries, rather than the hooch, they might have made history.  In those days, however, an expedition without an ample supply of scotch apparently was unthinkable.