Who would have thought it would be cheaper to ship rum overseas than a body? Evidently this was the case betwixt Jamaica and Hungary twenty years ago. The best part: evidently, corpse improves the flavor of rum.
The most famous instance of preservation by immersion in alcohol was the casking of the remains of Lord Nelson in the ship's brandy stores after his death during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. That much is true - Nelson was, in effect, pickled to get as much of him home in as decent a state as possible. But not in rum, as would later be claimed in lore. No, Nelson had been immersed in brandy for shipment home. At Gibralter the fluid was replaced with wine.
According to baseless hearsay, when the barrel was opened in England, it was considerably less than full. (In reality, Nelson arrived fairly topped up.) This gave rise to the story that sailors aboard the Victory had been unwilling to let a little thing like a decomposing dead Admiral get between them and their daily swigging and thus had been siphoning off generous helpings, eventually draining the funerary cask dry. Thanks to this bit of lore, the British Navy has come to use the term "tapping the Admiral" for getting an unauthorized drink of rum via a surreptitious straw.
Nelson wasn't the only famous Brit whose remains were casked in booze to get them home. When Prince Henry of Battenberg died from malaria on a British expeditionary force to West Africa in 1895, his body was transported back to England for a royal burial in an improvised tank made from biscuit tins and filled with navy rum.
The remains of less-famous personages have also been transported in this manner. In 1857, Nancy Martin of Wilmington, North Carolina, was on a year-long cruise with her father and brother when she died at sea. The menfolk put her body into a large cask after first tying it to a chair and nailing the chair to the bottom of the barrel to prevent her from floating or sloshing. Whiskey, rum, and wine were poured in, then the barrel was sealed and stored belowdecks. Upon return to dry land, Nancy was buried, still in her booze-filled cask, in Oakdale Cemetery. (Captain Martin was also to lose his son on this same voyage; four months later the lad was swept overboard during a midnight squall.)
It doesn't take all that much by way of fertile imagination to build on any of these true-life caskings - all one needs to make a good tale is to toss at it some thirsty sailors or a handful of parvenues who've inherited the manor but not the manners. That someone's remains could be stored in liquor is enough to set such tales in motion; from there it's but a hop and a skip to the certainty that someone somewhere must have stumbled upon seemingly lucky find only to afterwards discover he'd been "tapping the admiral."
Barbara "will you have a pint or a half Nelson?" Mikkelson
Sightings: In 2006 Reuters news service reported that a Hungarian magazine had published a version of this story: Hungarian builders who drank their way to the bottom of a huge barrel of rum while renovating a house got a nasty surprise when a pickled corpse tumbled out of the empty barrel, a police magazine website reported.
According to online magazine www.zsaru.hu, workers in Szeged in the south of Hungary tried to move the barrel after they had drained it, only to find it was surprisingly heavy and were shocked when the body of a naked man fell out.
The website said that the body of the man had been shipped back from Jamaica 20 years ago by his wife in the barrel of rum in order to avoid the cost and paperwork of an official return.
According to the website, workers said the rum in the 300-litre barrel had a "special taste" so they even decanted a few bottles of the liquor to take home.
The wife has since died and the man was buried in a proper grave. Last updated: 4 May 2006
decent a state as possible. But not in rum, as would later be claimed in lore. No, Nelson had been immersed in brandy for shipment home. At Gibralter the fluid was replaced with wine.
According to baseless hearsay, when the barrel was opened in England, it was considerably less than full. (In reality, Nelson arrived fairly topped up.) This gave rise to the story that sailors aboard the Victory had been unwilling to let a little thing like a decomposing dead Admiral get between them and their daily swigging and thus had been siphoning off generous helpings, eventually draining the funerary cask dry. Thanks to this bit of lore, the British Navy has come to use the term "tapping the Admiral" for getting an unauthorized drink of rum via a surreptitious straw.
Nelson wasn't the only famous Brit whose remains were casked in booze to get them home. When Prince Henry of Battenberg died from malaria on a British expeditionary force to West Africa in 1895, his body was transported back to England for a royal burial in an improvised tank made from biscuit tins and filled with navy rum.
The remains of less-famous personages have also been transported in this manner. In 1857, Nancy Martin of Wilmington, North Carolina, was on a year-long cruise with her father and brother when she died at sea. The menfolk put her body into a large cask after first tying it to a chair and nailing the chair to the bottom of the barrel to prevent her from floating or sloshing. Whiskey, rum, and wine were poured in, then the barrel was sealed and stored belowdecks. Upon return to dry land, Nancy was buried, still in her booze-filled cask, in Oakdale Cemetery. (Captain Martin was also to lose his son on this same voyage; four months later the lad was swept overboard during a midnight squall.)
It doesn't take all that much by way of fertile imagination to build on any of these true-life caskings - all one needs to make a good tale is to toss at it some thirsty sailors or a handful of parvenues who've inherited the manor but not the manners. That someone's remains could be stored in liquor is enough to set such tales in motion; from there it's but a hop and a skip to the certainty that someone somewhere must have stumbled upon seemingly lucky find only to afterwards discover he'd been "tapping the admiral."
Barbara "will you have a pint or a half Nelson?" Mikkelson
Sightings: In 2006 Reuters news service reported that a Hungarian magazine had published a version of this story:
Hungarian builders who drank their way to the bottom of a huge barrel of rum while renovating a house got a nasty surprise when a pickled corpse tumbled out of the empty barrel, a police magazine website reported.
According to online magazine www.zsaru.hu, workers in Szeged in the south of Hungary tried to move the barrel after they had drained it, only to find it was surprisingly heavy and were shocked when the body of a naked man fell out.
The website said that the body of the man had been shipped back from Jamaica 20 years ago by his wife in the barrel of rum in order to avoid the cost and paperwork of an official return.
According to the website, workers said the rum in the 300-litre barrel had a "special taste" so they even decanted a few bottles of the liquor to take home.
The wife has since died and the man was buried in a proper grave.
Last updated: 4 May 2006
Reply
Leave a comment