English wine cask units the mediæval French and Italian "botte") or pipe was half a tun, or 1008 pints. Tradition has it that George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward IV of England, was drowned in a butt of malmsey on 18 February 1478. (However, Josephine Tey in "The Daughter of Time" suggests that "drowned in a butt of malmsey" means rather that George, Duke of Clarence, drank himself to death rather than literally drowning in a container of wine.) In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado", the narrator claims he has received "a pipe of what passes for Amontillado".
TSS Duke of Clarence in 1930. "Duke of Clarence" was long, with a beam of and a depth of . As built, she was . She was later listed in Lloyd's Register as , . A pair of Laird Brothers three-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines, each of which had cylinders of , and diameter by stroke, connected to twin screws provided her propulsion. The engines gave "Duke of Clarence" a top speed of . Ordered by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (LYR), "Duke of Clarence" was built at Laird Brothers, Birkenhead, as the first of seven ships that they delivered between 1892 and 1909. It