A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 22

This is the 12th year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Why a story idea each day for the month? Because the best way to come up with a great story idea is to come up with a lot of ideas. And the best way to come up with a lot of ideas is to be proactive in sourcing story ideas.

Today’s story: Whiskey Salvaged From 79-Year-Old Scottish Shipwreck Is Up for Sale.

Whiskey connoisseurs in search of a briny dram packing a historical wallop are in luck: A bottle of Scotch whisky recovered from the wreck of the S.S. Politician, which sank off the coast of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides in 1941, is now up for auction. Sadly, the Grand Whisky Auction, which is conducting the sale, specifically states that the amber hued-spirit is no longer safe for human consumption.

Commercial diver George Currie located the wreck, along with a sliver of its 28,000 cases of whiskey, in 1987, when he and a team working on a subsea cable repair project decided to look for the lost ship in their free time, according to George Mair of Scottish newspaper the Daily Record.

Of the five bottles found on this underwater expedition, Currie kept just one. As he tells the Daily Record, he’d so often regaled family and friends with tales of the bottle’s origin that he decided it was time to bequeath the artifact to a new owner.

The lot, which includes a bottle of whiskey, a diving helmet and bricks from the cargo ship, is predicted to sell for a hefty sum approaching $20,000, reports Brad Japhe for Forbes. Bidding closes Monday at 4 p.m. Eastern time.

My first instinct was to do a rollicking comedy about an island community discovering whiskey from a shipwreck, getting good and drunk for a wild weekend of debauchery. Then my mind veered toward something darker and more violent in nature…

Foula is one of the smallest continuously inhabited islands in the world, a tiny speck in the Shetland Islands and a few hundred miles in the Atlantic Ocean north of Scotland.

The population: 38 people. Inhabitants used to make a living fishing, but now mostly survive farming sheep and guiding the occasional tourists on birding treks.

The island is currently owned by the Holbourn family, but centuries ago, it was Ciskes who claimed the island as theirs.

Imagine there is a simmering feud between these two clans: the Holbourns (Scottish descent) and the Ciskes (Norwegian descent). Given the harsh climate and difficult living conditions, the three dozen or so inhabitants of the island pretty much bury their hostilities and work together to survive. However, one sign of their friction: Despite so few residents, there are two congregations: Presbyterian for the Holbourns, Lutheran for the Ciskes.

In Act One, we meet some of the key characters and learn about the lifestyle of these rather stoic souls who go about their business every day, carving out their meager means of survival, poverty always just one step away.

Then an amazing thing happens: Bottles of whiskey begin to bob to the surface in the coastal waters, many of them landing onshore. There was the White Star Line RMS Oceanic which became shipwrecked in 1914 sinking as it struck the hidden reef known as the Shaalds o’ Foula. It is the single most notable event in the island’s history, but largely forgotten… until now.

A town meeting of all the residents. There on a table in their humble community hall sit nine bottles of vintage whiskey. The topic of the evening: What to do with them?

The obvious solution: Divide them between the two clans. But after four are handed over to the respective leaders of the Holbourns and Ciskes, there remains one bottle.

Being good Christian families, both clans are teetotallers, except when they celebrate the New Year on January 9th (the islanders have their own calendar). Then — and only then — do they crack open some well-hidden whiskey and allow themselves one sip apiece. Even the children. The extent of their New Year’s celebration.

The more senior of the islanders suggests this is something of a miracle. Whiskey buried at sea for over a century. Why now do the bottles appear? A sign from God perhaps. Cause to celebrate some forthcoming blessing?

So it is decided: The one remaining bottle shall be drunk by the adult members of the island. This will resolve the issue of what to do with the extra bottle of whiskey and allow the more mature members of the community to test the alcohol to see if it is “safe to share with everyone.”

When the elders crack open the bottle, the aroma of the alcohol fills the hall. The scent is amazing, but nothing compared to the taste. Moreover, once an islander consumes a shot glass filled with the “miraculous” brew, their spirits are lifted. Laughter fills the air. Good-natured back-slaps and hugs abound. Soon, everyone is invited to partake of the whiskey, a strange, but magical version of the Eucharist.

Things seem to be going quite well until their tongues loosened by the liquor, young Sean Holbourn, all of seventeen years, and Kjersti Ciske, even younger at sixteen, announce their intention to be married.

By the way… the young girl is with child.

Stunned silence. It is bad enough that the teens have been secretly courting for many months, but the fact they hail from different clans… well, this type of co-mingling of the respective clan’s blood is anathema to tradition.

One thing leads to another and what transpires is a replica of the Hatfield-McCoy battle. Of course, every family on the island has shotguns, pistols, harpoons for fishing, and a variety of crofting tools which can come in handy in close combat.

Fights break out. The other bottles of whiskey are consumed as the battle rages, causing the islanders to tap into their lizard-brain fear and hate of “the other.” Decades long anger over this or that brouhaha in the past between the clans explodes into violence.

It all leads to Old Man Holbourn, the most senior of the elders, revealing to the remaining male members of his clan, something he has kept hidden since 1944: It’s a bomb. From the German Luftwaffe. The island was attacked for a few minutes during World War II and this bomb landed, but did not detonate. Over the years, Old Man Holbourn has tinkered away in his barn — it is well-known to EVERYONE they are NOT to disturb him at his work — and he has created a trebuchet.

If they can somehow coerce the Ciskes to gather in their Lutheran chapel, the Holbourns can launch the Nazi bomb in the trebuchet and “with God’s grace behind us,” it will explode and finally “rid us of this evil Norwegian scourge.”

Note: At some point, word gets out to the mainland via short-wave radio that the islanders have discovered this whiskey. This is a setup for a big ironic payoff.

And so it is that as the remaining bloodied and wounded Ciske clan members gather in the Lutheran chapel to beseech God to intervene on their behalf that the few Holbourn family members left launch the Nazi bomb in the trebuchet.

Up… up… up… it sails in the sky. Now starting its descent. There is the Lutheran chapel. There is the bomb. Sailing directly overhead… then beyond the chapel… out toward the sea… then SPLOOSH! Into the ocean.

As it descends in the murky waters, we track where it’s heading: directly toward the wreck of the RMS Oceanic! And what is that we see? In its store room, quite literally THOUSANDS OF BOTTLES OF WHISKEY! It’s like the ending of Citizen Kane, endless row after row of whiskey.

Then… KAWHOOOOOM! The Nazi bomb hits the ship and explodes. With the concussion, the remnants of the ship collapses upon itself… and with it ALL of the whiskey bottles shatter. Every. Single. Damn. One. Of. Them. Each bashing against the other. Crash, Crash, Crash, Crash…

Cut to the Denouement. A boat arrives. Aboard are all sorts of government officials. They are atwitter. Do you know how much just ONE bottle of 100-year-old whiskey can fetch at auction? Twenty thousand pounds! Heads shake. My God, these islanders are going to be millionaires once they recover the whiskey from the RMS Oceanic.

Then a very… thick… silence. There before their stunned eyes are the islanders. All dead. Sprawled in various death poses.

The visitors blink in disbelief at the horror. Then hear the sound of tink-tink-tink. They turn. The ocean behind them as far as the eye can see, shards of floating whiskey bottles… clinking against each other as the waves lap the quiet shores of Foula.

Fade Out.

Dark comedy? Morality tale? I prefer to look at it as a satire about humanity at their stupidest.

What would YOU do with this setup?

There you have it, my 22nd story idea of the month.

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21

Each day in April, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are valuable skills for a writer to develop.