Painkiller

Pusser's rum, pineapple, cream of coconut, and OJ — Henderson's Soggy Dollar Bar (Jost Van Dyke, 1970s), Tobias swimming ashore to taste and reverse-engineer it.

The Painkiller was created in the early 1970s by Daphne Henderson, the English owner of the Soggy Dollar Bar at White Bay on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. The bar got its name from a simple logistical reality: there was no dock at White Bay, which meant that sailors and boaters anchoring offshore had to swim or wade to reach the beach, arriving with their cash soaked through. Henderson's bar was a six-seat operation on a stretch of white sand, and the Painkiller she made with rum, pineapple juice, cream of coconut, and orange juice became so well known among the sailing community that word traveled far beyond the BVI. Pusser's Rum founder Charles Tobias was among those who made the swim specifically to taste the drink. Henderson refused to share her recipe despite his repeated requests, and Tobias eventually managed to bring one of her drinks back through the surf to his kitchen on Tortola, where he worked to reverse-engineer it. He arrived at what he called a 4-1-1 formula: four parts pineapple juice, one part cream of coconut, and one part orange juice, with Pusser's Rum added to preference. Tobias had acquired commercial rights to the Royal Navy's rum blend in 1979, and his association of Pusser's with the Painkiller gave the drink its global reach. Pusser's trademarked both the cocktail name and recipe in 1989, and their printed promotional materials have always credited the drink with the byline as inspired by Daphne at the Soggy Dollar Bar at White Bay on Jost Van Dyke.