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The interesting fact concerning messages placed into
bottles and tossed to the seas is they can float about indefinitely.
They can survive waves and storms that can sink ships. They have
been known to float about for decades, even centuries. The following
stories are actual accounts of the way this mysterious and often
romanticized method have been used.
Paolina and Ake Viking were married in Sicily in the
autumn of 1958, thanks to a far-traveling bottle. Two years earlier
Ake, a bored young Swedish sailor on a ship far out at sea had
dropped a bottle overboard with a message asking any pretty girl
who found it to write. Paolina's father, a Sicilian fisherman,
picked it up and passed it to his daughter for a joke. Continuing
the joke, Paolina sent off a note to the young sailor, the correspondence
quickly grew warmer. Ake visited Sicily, and the marriage soon
followed their first meeting.
The strangest case was perhaps that of Chunosuke Matsuyama, a
Japanese seaman who was shipwrecked with 44 shipmates in 1784.
Shortly before he and his companions died of starvation on Pacific
coral reef, Matsuyama carved a brief account of their tragedy
on a piece of wood, sealed it an a bottle, and then threw it into
the sea. In 1935, 150 years later it washed up at the very seaside
village where Matsuyama had been born.
Messages placed in a bottle apparently had even an practical purpose.
In the 16th Century Queen Elizabeth I of England used bottles
to carry intelligence reports. "Elizabeth I received an intelligence
report by this means and was so disconcerted to find it had been
opened by a boatman at Dover that she appointed an official Uncorker
of Bottles and decreed that no unauthorized person might open
a message-carrying bottle, on pain of death."
When he was Postmaster General for the American colonies, Benjamin
Franklin realized that, because their whaler captains knew the
currents much better than their English counterparts, American
ships were crossing the Atlantic much quicker than the British
mail packets. He therefore compiled a chart using both the whalers'
lore and information he obtained by dropping bottles with written
instructions into the Gulf Stream and asking the finders to return
them. The information he recorded is little changed today.
In 1914 while crossing the English Channel, a homesick British
infantryman named Thomas Hughes wrote his wife a letter, sealed
it in an empty ginger-beer bottle, and tossed it overboard. Two
days later, he perished in battle. In March 1999, a fisherman
found the bottle in a Thames River estuary. The fisherman was
flown to Auckland, and personally delivered the bottle to Hughes'
86-year-old daughter. She treasured that note because it was the
only letter she ever had from her father.
In the spirit of the British Infantryman Mr. Hughes, we hope
your special message gives an everlasting memory.
We hope your Timeless Message has given you a unique or romantic
story you would like to share with us and our readers.
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