Whiskies Galore: A Tour of Scotland's Island Distilleries

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Despite a difficult production beset by often appalling weather, and a slow start at the English box-office, it became a worldwide hit and Ealing's most profitable film. It is also one of its most fondly remembered, particularly in Scotland. Its success owes much to its remarkable feeling of authenticity: with the exception of Basil Radford and Joan Greenwood most of the cast were Scots, with the extras coming from among the islanders of Barra where much of it was filmed. The constant attentions of the islanders helped the cast to perfect their accents. A tour, an investigation, a fact finding mission, done with the utmost geniality by a man whose blood is most probably a pale amber hue… you can almost smell the peat, hear the clink of glasses and see the wind on the heather!' When the locals learned from the crew exactly what the ship was carrying, a series of illegal salvage operations took place at night, before the customs and excise officials arrived. The islands supplies of whisky had dried up due to war-time rationing, so the islanders periodically helped themselves to some of the 260,000 bottles of whisky before winter weather broke up the ship. Boats came from as far away as Lewis as news of the whisky travelled across the Outer Hebrides. No islander regarded it as stealing, as for them the rules of salvage meant that once the bounty was in the sea, it was theirs to rescue.

Geraghty, Christine (2002). British Cinema in the Fifties: Gender, Genre and the 'New Look' . London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-69464-8. On 26 April at Lochmaddy Sheriff Court a group of men from Barra pleaded guilty to theft and were charged between three and five pounds. Mr McColl was furious at the leniency of the men’s sentences, but the police, being mainly locals themselves, were tired of the bothering the locals who had not, in their minds, done such a bad thing. However, Mr McColl continued his crusade against these illegal salvagers and some of the men were sentenced to up to six weeks in prison in Inverness and Peterhead.Clark, Gregory (2018). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth . Retrieved 30 January 2018.

A delightful grand tour of island distilleries. A great read: it mixes childhood recollections, laments about Hebridean weather, historical anecdotes and 101 astute, humorous observations'

Seventy-five years ago today, on the morning of 5 February, 1941, the SS Politician was heading north past the Outer Hebrides, having cast off from Liverpool two days earlier. Its final destinations? Kingston, Jamaica, and New Orleans. After passing the Isle of Man, the weather had worsened, the winds had risen to gale force and the ship’s Captain, Beaconsfield Worthington, changed course as a result. This was an unwanted distraction and difficulty for a crew anticipating a winter crossing of a U-Boat-infested Atlantic.