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Hello people, I'm on a posting spree.

We all know from Explorers on the Moon that Professor Calculus has never drunk whiskey before: "It's the first time in my life I have tasted this beverage. But this is not the moment to drink camomile tea!"

What's the significance of the Captain's broken whiskey bottle in Red Rackham's Treasure that the Captain and Tintin discover right outside of Calculus' hiding/sleeping spot?

The missing biscuits, pillow and blanket are finally found. With the confrontation between the Thompsons and the ship's cook blaming Snowy for the disappeared chicken, Herge has twice caused us to wonder what could have happened to those items. Herge uses the same plot device (?) when he shows the Captain searching frantically for his whiskey. The pillow, blanket and biscuits were obviously purloined by Calculus for his own needs. But the whiskey...?

My question is, if Calculus has never had any interest in whiskey, what's it doing smashed on the deck in front of his hiding place?

Milou is quite partial to whiskey, maybe he was wrongly accused of the chicken but guilty of the whiskey...

Just happened to be the spot where he smashed one of the bottles. I think it was intended as a plot device: Snowy laps up the whiskey, is found drunk and the trail leads to the life boat where Calculus is sleeping.

One thing to note: Calculus is shown clearly sipping the whiskey found in the Unicorn and brought back by the dozens by Haddock.

You're right, wave; that broken whisky bottle's not really fully explained, is it?

I'm not sure about your theory that Calculus just happened to smash one of the bottles there, mct, because he tells the captain that it was on the quayside that he switched his sub parts for the whisky bottles the night before the voyage, not on the ship. And the bottle has been recently smashed (still dripping down onto the deck below) when they find it, two nights out into the voyage. So it didn't get smashed when Calculus was switching the cargo on the eve of departure. I agree that it's a plot device, and a nice one too in the way it leads them to the lifeboat, but I think wave's right that it doesn't fully make sense.

And I don't think Snowy nicked it, Dupondt. He seems as surprised (though pleased) to find the whisky dripping from the smashed bottle as anyone else.

The only halfway-plausible explanation I can think of would be that when Calculus took all the bottles out of the crates on the quayside and replaced them with the submarine parts, he must have kept back a single bottle to take with him into the lifeboat along with the biscuits. This does seem completely at odds with his later teetotal tendencies, but maybe he only wanted it so he could take an emergency nip to keep warm at nights. (Tintin carries a flask of emergency brandy in another book for similar reasons.) Or maybe Hergé hadn't yet decided Calculus would be teetotal when he wrote this story (which is Calculus's debut appearance, of course).

Even if this is a correct interpretation though, it doesn't really explain how the whisky came to be dropped out of the lifeboat by Calculus and smashed on the upper deck for Snowy, Tintin and Haddock to find. I suppose Calculus must have been sitting up in the lifeboat earlier that evening, having a nocturnal peek out of his hiding place, had a wee swig of the whisky, dropped the bottle but been too absent-minded to notice and too deaf to hear the breaking glass, and then lain back down in the lifeboat and gone to sleep, not realising he'd left such a clue to his being there.

On a tiny separate point, it's whisky without an e that the Captain drinks - the Scottish spelling - rather than whiskey with an e, which is the spelling for the Irish variety (and of some American brands, I think). Sorry to be pedantic. I thought I'd make the correction before Jock did. ;-)

Also by the way, it's rum that the Captain brings up from the Unicorn, mct, not whisky. And I think Calculus is only sniffing it on p.44, not sipping it, so that scene at least doesn't contradict his general teetotalism.

Maybe Calculus broke the whisky on purpose, since, he obviously does not approve of alcoholism.
See Picaros if you don't know what I'm talking about.

cigars of the beeper
Maybe Calculus broke the whisky on purpose, since, he obviously does not approve of alcoholism.

I don't think he'd have taken it purely for the purposes of breaking it right next to his hiding place, since this obviously gives away his position. If anti-alcohol destruction was his motivation when he took it, he'd surely have smashed it where he found it, or disposed of it secretly.

But, extending your idea a little, cigars, maybe he took the bottle from the galley just before the start of the voyage (along with the biscuits) not quite realising at the time that it was whisky, or not knowing then that he didn't like whisky. Then, two nights out into the voyage, he takes his first sip, realises what it is (or realises that he doesn't like it) and flings it out of the lifeboat in disgust.

Perhaps he meant it to go in the sea when he flung it and, because of his deafness, didn't hear it break on the deck beneath the lifeboat.

It's not a great theory, though better than my last one maybe! But maybe the most likely explanation is simply that Hergé forgot to fully work out the logic of this plot device and hoped no one would notice. Or maybe it's better explained in the French language original and the English translators left out something.