Message in a Bottle: Not as Romantic as You Believe

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Did you know that the oldest known message in a bottle was recently found on the coast of Perth, Australia?  The bottle was probably only in the ocean for about 12 months, but when it washed up in Perth it remained buried for almost 132 years.  It was originally jettisoned by German ship Paula as part of shipping route project in 1886 and would have been released in the south-east Indian Ocean.  The German Naval Observatory released thousands of bottles during the 69-year experiment but has only received 662 messages back.

But we may yet discover an even older message in a bottle, as it is widely believed that messages in bottles date back to 310 BC when Greek philosopher Theophrastus used a bottle to test his theory that the Atlantic flows into the Mediterranean Sea. So why do we believe, aside from the Kevin Costner film, that messages in bottles are romantic in origin?

There is a case for nostalgic messages, such as the one that Jeremiah Burke wrote to his family from the sinking Titanic.  Burke, a 19-year-old when the Titanic sailed, used the bottle of holy water that his mother had given to him before he sailed to send a short message: “From Titanic, goodbye all, Burke of Glanmire, Cork.” He tied the paper with his shoelace.  The message washed up a few kilometers from his family home in Cork nearly a year later. His mother recognized his handwriting and the bottle she had given him.

Most “messages in a bottle” were used by scientists to try to map ocean currents, and even today amateur scientists use “drift bottles” to track the course of the tides.

So have you ever found a message in a bottle? Let me know on Facebook.