Messages in bottles have been around for centuries. In fact, for the thousands of years that man has sailed the oceans of the world, bottles carrying messages have performed a variety of interesting and often unusual services. In their countless journeys across the oceans, these fascinating vessels have been found to solve crimes and mysteries. They have carried tales of joy and sadness, of surprise and disaster. One person was assured a fortune in hidden treasure ... if it was still there! Lovers' quarrels have been resolved, and romance has been brought to people thousands of miles apart. Schools of fish have been tracked, ocean currents mapped, and mined areas cleared for safe passage, just with the use of simple drifting bottles.
True stories surrounding bottles and the messages found in them are numerous and fascinating.
Here are some examples of those tales:
In
England, during the 16th Century, merely reading a message found in a bottle was
a crime punishable by hanging! The Queen of England even appointed an
"Official Uncorker of Ocean Bottles", lest the nation's security be
threatened by a spy's attempt to pass secret messages.
On May 16th, 1949, a bottle washed up on a beach near San Francisco. It was discovered by local dishwasher, Jack Wurm. In it was the following note:
"To avoid all confusion, I leave my entire estate to the lucky person who finds this bottle."
June 20th, 1937,
Signed, Daisy Alexander.
As it turned out, Daisy Alexander, was something of an eccentric. For years, just to satisfy her curiosity, she dropped bottles carrying messages from a bridge over the River Thames in London. She also happened to be the only child of Isaac Singer, founder of the Singer sewing Machine empire. When she died, in 1940, at 80 years of age, she was one of the world's richest women. Her estate was valued at over $12,000,000!
In
May 1957, while walking along a beach near his home in Sicily, Italy, Sebastiano
Puzzo, found a bottle with a note inside. The note was in English and he gave it
to his eighteen year old daughter, Paolina, to translate. The note invited all
girls aged sixteen to twenty to write if they wanted to marry a handsome blond
Swede. It was dated December, 1955, and was from Ake Viking, a Swedish sailor.
Puzzo suggested that, just for fun, Paolina should write and send a photograph.
Just for fun, she did.
A year later, in Sicily, Ake and Paolina were married!
A bottle was once washed ashore on a German beach. In it was a note that read:
"Our final hour is at
hand"
Signed, Captain Odo Loewe
The year was 1916, during the First World War. Two months earlier, the German airship, Zeppelin 19, was returning from a bombing raid over London, when it mysteriously vanished in the fog over the English Channel. With it went its crew and Captain Odo Loewe!
In 1979 John and Dottie Peckham of Los Angeles, California, while enjoying a Christmas cruise from Acapulco to Hawaii, put a message in a wine bottle and tossed it overboard. The note promised a reward to the finder, and gave their names, a postbox number and a dollar bill for return postage
In 1983, more than 9000 miles away, 10 miles off the coast of Thailand in the South China Seas, Nguyen Van Ho drifted helplessly, without drinking water, in a five-man fishing boat along with 30 other Vietnamese refugees. He spotted a bottle floating by, and on reading and understanding the note inside, his hopes for freedom were renewed.
Soon after, Ho and his companions reached a United Nations refugee camp in Thailand. There he wrote a letter to the Pekhams:
"We tried to find freedom according to your letter. Now we send a letter to the boss and we wish you will answer us sooner."
The letter arrived on March 4th, 1983, and the Peckhams immediately began corresponding with Ho.
Two years later, on April 26th, 1985, with the help of the Peckhams, Ho and his family arrived in Los Angeles to begin a new life, fulfilling the promise carried by the message in the bottle. The reward was freedom!
One
day in 1956, Martin Douglas kissed his wife, Alice, goodbye and set off in his
small cabin cruiser for a day of fishing off the coast of Florida near his home.
Not returning on schedule, extensive air and sea searches followed. He was
eventually, officially declared "missing at sea", and never seen
again.
About a year later, on an Australian beach, a jar was found with a note tightly sealed inside it ...
"Should this note be found, please forward it to my wife, Mrs. Alice Douglas, at Miami Beach, Florida. No doubt you're wondering what has became of me. I got blown out into the waters, due to engine trouble."
With the note was a blank check, on the back of which was the handwritten will of Martin Douglas.
June
9, 1910: On this day, a passenger aboard the steamship Arawatta placed a message
in a bottle and threw it overboard off the coast of Australia. It was found 72
years and 362 days later, on an island just west of Queensland, Australia. This
set a world record for the longest time between sending and finding a Message in
a Bottle. The record was broken in 1996, when a fisherman found a bottle that
had been in the North Sea for more
than 82 years. It contained a message offering a small reward if returned. He
collected one pound sterling from the British government!
Messages in bottles have been adrift for as long as half a century. They have circumnavigated the earth, surviving the crush of polar ice caps, raging storms and wild tempests. At times it was almost as if fate, itself, had destined their journey. But, whether they deliver a note from some curious oceanographer, or from a ship wrecked castaway, messages in bottles will continue to roam the globe capturing the imaginations of mariners and land-dwellers alike.
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