For a long time, people liked to put information in bottles to find people who were related to them. The "Letter in a Bottle" dates back roughly to 310 BC and was used as a means of mapping ocean currents. The Greek philosopher Theoples used this strategy to test his theory that the Atlantic Ocean flowed into the Mediterranean Sea.
In addition, "Letter in a Bottle" is also used by people to convey rescue requests and sad farewells. Here are some fascinating stories about the journey of information transfer at sea.
1 Postcard from Texas
One weekend in January 2019, Jim and Candy Duke were walking along the national coast of Padre Island, Texas, when they spotted a glass bottle wrapped in branches on shore. Amazingly, this bottle is not covered by a barnacles and looks almost brand new. There is an orange note on the bottle that reads "BREAK BOTTLE".
They broke the bottle and found that the note inside was actually a postcard that said it would be mailed back to the Commercial Fisheries Agency's NOAA's Galveston Laboratory and awarded a 50-cent reward.
From February 1962 to December 1963, the lab released 7,863 bottles into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Texas. The aim was to study the flow of water and its role in the movement of juvenile shrimp from spawning grounds to nursery farms. They sent back postcards, but asked the lab not to send them rewards.
2 Finally found them
In 1794, Japanese seafarer Tadanosuke Matsuyama and his 43 companions encountered a storm on an island in the South Pacific. With no supplies, all the crew members eventually died; but before that, Matsuyama wrote a message about their misfortune and put him in a bottle carved from coconut wood. The whereabouts of the group were not known until 150 years later, when the bottle was found near the Japanese village of Pingdi.
3 Ghost information from the Titanic
Irish cousin Jeremiah Burke, 19, and cousin Nora Hegati, 18, boarded the unfortunate Titanic in 1912 to meet the Burke sisters who had settled in Boston a few years earlier. Before setting sail, Burke's mother gave him a bottle of holy water.
When the Titanic began to sink, Burke managed to write a letter, "Titanic, goodbye, Burke of GranMayer, Cork," which was put into a holy water bottle. A year later, the bottle was washed up on the coast a few miles from his home. These artifacts have been preserved in this family for nearly a century and were donated to the Cobb Heritage Center in 2011.
4 85 years later
In 1914, Thomas Hughes, a British soldier in World War I, wrote a letter to his wife, sealed it in a ginger soda bottle, and threw it into the English Channel. He died two days later in fighting in France.
In 1999, a fisherman found a bottle in the River Thames and sent the letter to Hughes's wife. However, Mrs. Hughes died in 1979. The letter ended with Hughes' 86-year-old daughter, Thomas Hughes, who was only 1 year old when he died.
5 Experiments of the German Navy
In 2018, Tonya Ilman was walking on the dunes of Weech Island (near Perth, Australia) when she found an old gin bottle. Inside was a roll of paper tied with a rope. The letter, dated June 12, 1886, came from a German ship.
From 1864 to 1933, several ships at the German Naval Observatory threw information bottles out of their ships, marking the ship's coordinates, dates, routes, and other contents. The German Naval Observatory wanted to understand ocean currents, like the ancient "drift bottles". This message will ask people to write down where and when they found the bottle and return it. A local maritime museum confirmed the bottle's information. The bottle is currently on display.
6 Oldest letters
In 2011, a Scottish fisherman named Andrew Lipper found a bottle while fishing near the Shetland Islands. Inside, he found a very old letter. It later proved to be the oldest bottle letter found in the Guinness Book of World Records.
The letter, written by Captain Hunter Brown of the Maritime School of Glasgow, was sent to sea in 1914 along with 1889 other bottles. A government agency in Aberdeen continues to focus on Brown's project; so far, he has found 315 Brown bottles.
7 Unfinished business
In 1915, the Lusitania, an ocean liner from New York to Liverpool, was torpedoed and sank in just 18 minutes. But it was long enough that one passenger wrote in a bottle what was perhaps the most poignant and eerie message: "Still on deck with a few people, the last ship has left." We are sinking rapidly. Some people near me were praying to be with a pastor. The end is nearby. Maybe this note will..." What the author hopes this note can do is a secret that will be forever engulfed by the sea.
8 Love Potions
In 1956, a Swedish sailor named Ak Viking, suffering from lovesickness, wrote a short message, "To the Beautiful and Distant Man," stuffed it in a bottle, and was sent to sea. Two years later, the Vikings' request was answered by a Sicilian woman named Paulina.
"I'm not pretty, but it seems amazing that this little bottle has gone so far to find me that I have to give you an answer," she replied. The two began to communicate, and eventually viking moved to Sicily and married Paulina by the sea.
9 Memo to Mom
In the early 21st century, when A 10-year-old girl from Manhattan, Sidony Ferry, visited friends on Long Island, she scribbled a text message, threw it into the sea, and put it in a ginger soda bottle.
In 2012, After Superstorm Sandy, Pacho Park staff found a bottle containing A letter from Sidony Ferry while cleaning up beach debris. Sadly, in 2010, Ferry fell to his death on a cliff in Switzerland.
10 Bittersweet reminders
A fisherman picks a simple brown bottle from the Baltic Sea, giving a lady a glimpse of her grandfather, whom she has never met.
Richard Platz tossed a brown bottle containing information into the Baltic Sea while hiking off the coast of Germany. Fisherman Conrad Fisher discovered the bottle 101 years later. Despite Platts' death in 1946, a genealogist followed the clues to find the home of his granddaughter Angela Erdmann. Pratts died six years before Oldman was born, which made the delivery of the postcard bittersweet.
He also put two stamps of the time in the bottle so the discoverer wouldn't incur the cost. But he didn't expect it to take 101 years.
11 Crossing the Atlantic
During a visit to Rockport Beach, Massachusetts, Max Wittenberg and his father sealed a message in a bottle and threw it into the sea. In August 2010, Wittenburg was 10 years old.
The letter included Wittenberg's name and some of his interests at the time, his address and response to requests. In November 2019, Fredenburg, who now studies at Suffolk University in Boston, received a text message from his father saying he had received a response. The reply came from a man named "G Dubois" who apparently found the bottle on the beach in October. But that beach isn't in Massachusetts, not in North America, but in France.
The reply reads: "It will take 9 years to separate us for 6,000 [kilometers]. "You grew a lot during that time: 10 to 19 years old."