Alvee ! Will we bid on one of these bottles ?

Here is what I don't understand.  They're in ANTARCTICA.  There is no national jurisdiction.  Not a police force or a compliance officer within 1,000 miles.  And if there were, they sure as heck wouldn't be showing up to enforce a century old claim to a case of whiskey for whom not only everyone with a claim to it is dead of old age, but so are their grandchildren.  And what do they do with this case of century old whiskey that started out as some of the best in the world?  They TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT! Is there even the possibility of a more ignorant and ridiculous response?  I don't think so. 

I'm telling you one thing loud and clear right now.  Today's explorers are a different breed from Shackleton's party. 

- Zurf

I don't understand how they totally ran out of supplies.... but there's a case of whisky left. If it'd been a Scottish expedition all the whisky would've been blootered on the 1st night.

If you've never read it "Endurance" is one heck of a good read.  It's like an action fiction, but it's the true story of Shackleton's adventure to Antarctica.  There's dogs, and stowaways, and impossible odds, and impossible feats, and a happy ending.  If you know anything about boats, this will amaze you: They sailed across the Southern Ocean - from a receding ice floe broke off from the mainland of Antarctica to a small whale fishing village on a flyspeck of an island - something like a thousand miles of the roughest and coldest seas the world knows in and amongst ice floes that could crush them in minutes and they did it in a 23' open boat with an amateur navigator literally learning the craft from an instructional book while they were underway and using only a compass and astrolabe.  The boat HAD been crushed and was salvaged, repaired, and slightly modified just before they left.  An astounding feat!  They took turns on captaining the vessel and literally used the non-sailing bodies as live ballast scrambling side to side and front to back belowdecks because the seas were so rough and the winds so unpredictable that the rock ballast they had couldn't be moved fast enough to compensate.

Thanks Zurf. As ever, a goldmine of info. Not quite what the Scots had in mind for the penguins though.