Letters at sea: they were used to make discoveries, report intelligence, seek recognition, and ask for help. Let's talk about the most interesting ones.
Although a bottle with a note thrown into the sea seems like a strange means of communication, this method was often used in different times and for different purposes: for scientific research, calling for help, conveying an important message, and even seeking love.
Go with the flow
David Martin. Portrait of Benjamin Franklin. 1767 year
According to legend, the first sender of the vessel with "filling" was the ancient Greek philosopher and naturalist Theophrastus, around 310 BC. who threw several containers into the Strait of Gibraltar. He wanted to prove that the Mediterranean Sea is filled with water from the Atlantic Ocean. One of the messages was found some time later off the coast of Sicily.
The "bottle method" was also used to study currents in the future. American diplomat and inventor Benjamin Franklin, being the chief postmaster of the North American colonies, drew attention to the fact that the journey of postal packet boats from England to America takes two weeks less than in the opposite direction. With the help of bottles fired through the water, a powerful current was discovered - the Gulf Stream. It was first mapped by Franklin in 1700.
For two and a half centuries in England, the death penalty was threatened for breaking the message bottles caught in the sea or found on the shore.
The State Oceanographic Institute named after Zubov keeps 46 notes from bottles thrown from the Okhotsk transport and found in Primorye and Kamchatka. I asked sailors sailing in the Sea of Japan and Okhotsk and the northern part to participate in the study of sea currents by throwing bottles The Pacific, head of the hydrographic expedition Mikhail Zhdanko. The note asked for information on where the vessel was found. In total, from 1907 to 1912, about 10,000 bottles were thrown. Of these, 219 have been found. After processing the data obtained, it was possible to construct the first schemes of currents of the then still poorly studied seas. The last bottle, thrown from Okhotsk in 1910, was found in 1988 in the beach area of the island by a resident of Sakhalin.
Lord uncorker
Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I in The Golden Age
For two and a half centuries in England, the death penalty was threatened for breaking the message bottles caught in the sea or found on the shore. For the same time, the position of a bottle opener existed at the court - the only person to whom this responsible business was entrusted.
The history of this law is as follows. In the spring of 1560, a vessel with a "filling" was caught in a fisherman's net in the English Channel. The leaf that was retrieved from there turned out to be a message from an English spy to Elizabeth I, in which he reported on the landing of Dutch merchants on Novaya Zemlya, owned by the Russians. The message reached the queen. Elizabeth was terribly annoyed, and it is difficult to say more than whether the omnipresent Dutchmen, whether a spy who chose such a strange method of communication, or a fisherman who "opened someone else's letter" and found out what he was not supposed to know at all. It got, as usual, the "switchman" - the fisherman was hanged and a law was issued so that others would not disdain.
The post of uncorker was taken by Lord Thomas Tonfield, to whom the "catch" from all over the country flocked. In the first year of his service alone, he extracted 52 messages from bottles. They say that when he came to Elizabeth with his next report, she was invariably interested: "Well, what does Neptune write to us?" However, the office and the strange law were abolished already at the very end of the eighteenth century.
SOS
In 2005, a ship bound for the United States ran aground, supplies on board quickly ran out, and passengers had to do at least something to try to survive.
Often, bottle mail was used as a last resort in critical situations. Unfortunately, it did not always work. Often, a call for help reached the addressee after decades or did not reach it at all. So, in the spring of 1957, on the Jamaican coast, they found a bottle with a dilapidated by sea chart... It barely read the text on English language: “July 1750. The Bretren of Coast is burning in the middle of the Atlantic. In vain is the hope of saving any of the crew, except for the twelve who seized the boat. To my mother Elizabeth from Londonderry: don't cry for me. To my spiritual father Thomas Dryden: take care of my mother and my younger sisters ... We are hundreds of miles from the coast. My captain is trying unsuccessfully to maintain order. I await death in silence. May the Almighty reward the one who finds this letter ... "
Priest George Phillips sends bottles of sermons into the sea. Surprisingly, the answers to him come from Alaska, Hawaii, New Guinea, from Mexico
But 88 migrants from Peru and Ecuador who were heading to the United States in 2005, even though they were caught in a storm, were more fortunate. The bottle they threw with a request for rescue was discovered by a fisherman from Costa Rica just three days later, and the passengers of the ship, most of whom were women and children, were rescued.
Bottle pastor
Pastor George Phillips and his wife Ella
George Phillips, an American priest who lives on the shores of Puget Sound in Washington state, has been nicknamed the Bottle Pastor. This was facilitated by the way they spread "the good and the eternal." Empty bottles of alcohol drunk by the villagers helped Phillips, in particular, in the fight against the "green serpent". He packed his sermons in empty containers and sent them out into the wild.
Nature helped Father George: there are strong currents in Puget Bay, reaching speeds of 10 knots (18.5 km / h). Thus, the clergyman sent over 20,000 messages. And - lo and behold! - replies to him began to come from Alaska, Hawaii, New Guinea, from Mexico ...
Among the contingent of parishioners expanded in this way, there were many drinking people who considered the words of the pastor that came down to them in such an original way as a sign of God and coped with their bad habit.
Retribution will not escape
The crash of the airship L-19 in the North Sea
One day, a note found in a fished bottle served as the reason for the death sentence. During the First World War, in February 1916, during a night raid on London, the British shot down an L-19 zeppelin. The airship fell into the North Sea, but was still floating on the surface. Team members fired flares, hoping for rescue. The British patrol minesweeper King George V approached those in distress. Senior Lieutenant Fergusson, who commanded it, did not dare to take the drowning aboard: the minesweeper's crew consisted of only seven people, whom the rescued could have made prisoners. Promising the commander of the airship Otto Louve to send help, the British sailed away. Soon the L-19 went down.
A few months later, King George V was captured by an enemy destroyer. Fergusson, who appeared before the German military tribunal, was shown a piece of a piece of paper describing his meeting with the crew of the downed airship. The entry was dated February 1, 1916 and was signed by Otto Louve. The note became the basis for the charge of premeditated murder - a refusal to help those in distress at sea, and Fergusson was shot.
" I am looking for a wife…"
Ake Viking and Paolina Pozzo
In Ireland, at the quay of the port of Queenstown, in 1956, a vessel was found with the following message: “If the one who found this bottle is a woman who has no gray hair in her head, who does not grumble and cooks well, and who does not mind marrying a sailor, most time spent at sea ... then let him write to James Gleason - the sailor who sealed this bottle and threw it into the sea from the steamer "Victoria" in the middle of the Atlantic on March 29, 1895. " The find was not taken seriously at first, but then it turned out that the steamer "Victoria" was indeed sailing the seas and James Gleason was among the crew members. He died unmarried along with his ship during a storm off Cape Hatteras in May 1900. But there have been stories with happy endings.
In the summer of 1957, 22-year-old Swedish sailor Ake Viking sealed in a bottle a letter to a "distant and beautiful stranger" asking to respond and threw it into the Strait of Gibraltar. Six months later, she found herself off the coast of Sicily, where she fell into the hands of the fisherman's daughter, 17-year-old Paolina Pozzo. Here is what she wrote in response to a note caught in the sea: “I am not a beauty, but it is so much like a miracle that such a small bottle swam for so long and far and finally came to me that I could not help but answer you ... "Surprisingly, this letter reached its destination. In October 1958, in the city of Syracuse, the wedding of two people who met in such an amazing way took place. She went down in history as "bottle", and vintage photos of young people are still sold on Amazon (amazon.com) for $ 35.
One bottle traveled 97 years before being discovered. Another bottle, shipped from Canada, ended its sea voyage off the coast of Croatia. Below are some of the most surprising correspondence stories:
1. Message in a bottle from Canada, which ended up on the Croatian coast 28 years later
The message in a bottle was washed up on the coast of Croatia after being thrown into the sea off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. The bottle was discovered when a group of kitesurfers were cleaning a beach on Neretva near Dubrovnik, in the very south of Croatia.
Members of the kitesurfing clubs Spilt and Komin were preparing for the new season and cleaning the beaches when they came across a pile of broken glass. A young club member, Matea Medak-Rezic, noticed that there was a message inside one of the old bottles.
The message read: “Mary, you are truly a wonderful person. I hope we will continue to correspond. I said that I would write. Your friend forever, Jonathan. Nova Scotia "85".
The message in the bottle floated through Atlantic Ocean, through the straits of Gibraltar, around Mediterranean Sea and finally got into the Adriatic before it was washed off the Dalmatian coast. If you take it directly, the message covered a distance of 6437 kilometers, but considering the entire journey, it is safe to say that the message has traveled at least five times the distance.
2. A message in a bottle that was found 97 years later and which set a new world record
The message in a bottle, which has been lost at sea for nearly a century, has set a new world record, according to Guinness Book officials. The 97-year-old message, discovered near the Shetland isles, claims to be a message in a bottle that has been at sea for the longest period of time. It was discovered by Scottish skipper Andrew Leaper when he brought his fishing nets aboard. He compared his amazing find to "winning the lottery." Coincidentally, the 43-year-old skipper was driving the same boat that set the previous record, the Copious, sailing off the Shetland Islands. The previous record holder, Mark Anderson, was also on board when the message in the bottle was found.
Thrown into the sea in June 1914 by Captain CH Brown of the Glasgow School of Navigation, the message contained a postcard promising a sixpence reward to whoever found the message.
3. Message in a bottle answered 24 years later
Almost a quarter of a century after a German boy threw a message in a bottle from a ship in the Baltic Sea, he received an answer. A 13-year-old Russian boy, Daniil Korotkikh, was walking with his parents on the beach when he saw something sparkling in the sand. “I saw that bottle, and it seemed interesting to me,” said Korotkikh. "It looked like a German beer bottle with a ceramic stopper, and there was a message inside it." His father who knows German, translated the letter, which was carefully wrapped in cellophane and sealed with a medical adhesive. The message read: “My name is Frank and I am five years old. My dad and I are traveling to Denmark by ship. If you find this letter, please write to me and I will answer you. " The letter, dated 1987, indicated the address in Coesfeld.
Now, Frank Uesbeck, the boy who wrote the message, is 31 years old. His parents still live at the address provided in the letter. A Russian boy and a German met each other earlier this month on the Internet via video chat. Korotkikh showed Wesbek the bottle in which he found the message, as well as the framed letter itself.
4. A message in a bottle that returned to the sender's family after 76 years 
The message in a bottle, which was thrown into the sea 76 years ago, was discovered in New Zealand and returned to the family of the person who originally wrote it. The bottle was found by Geoff Flood in November 2012 and contained a note that read: “At sea. If you find this bottle, please pass it on to the address below. "
The note was dated March 17, 1936, and was apparently launched by Herbert Ernest Hillbrick, who stamped his name and address on the note. Mr. Flood found the bottle at Ninety Mile Beach in New Zealand. Most likely, Mr. Hillbrick threw the bottle into the sea while on a cruise on a P&O cruises.
Mr. Flood discovered that the author of the letter had died in the 1940s, but his great-grandson, Peter Hillbrick, was still living in Australia. “This bottle had been floating in the ocean for 76 years and then suddenly ended up in New Zealand,” said Mr. Hillbrick.
5. The captured crew was rescued from pirates after they threw a bottle with a message into the sea. 
In 2011, British commandos rescued the crew of a hijacked freighter after they sent a message in a bottle to their rescuers. The captured sailors were locked in a sealed and armored compartment of their ship as pirates hijacked it. When they saw two NATO ships arrive to free them, they threw the note into the water.
Their message, saying that everything was fine with them and that they were safe, was fished out of the ocean by special forces before they began to storm the ship. All crew members were rescued and found to be safe and sound, with the exception of one sailor with a cut on his arm, and the pirates were arrested.
6. Message in a bottle, which was answered 30 years later ... on Facebook
Oliver Vandevalle, who sent the message in a bottle more than 30 years ago, finally got a response after a Facebook user tracked the Belgian down on the popular social network.
During family vacation on a yacht sailing along the south coast of England, Vandevalle at the age of 14 threw a page from his notebook into the sea, sealed in a wine bottle. 33 years later, the Belgian received a response after Lorraine Yates found a bottle that washed ashore in Swanage, Dorset. Instead of responding to the message at the address listed in the note, Yates tracked down Vandevalle using the popular social networking site Facebook.
Vandevalle, 47, says: “It was so long ago that my first reaction after she contacted me was to say it wasn't me. Then I remembered. " In his letter, Vandevalle introduced himself as "a 14-year-old boy whose home is in Belgium." He further wrote: “I don’t know if you are a disciple, woman or man. I am on sailing yacht length of 18 meters. She is called Tamaris. While I was writing this letter, we sailed Portland Bill on the south coast of England. We left this morning. "
Vandevalle's two sons have attempted to recreate their father's amazing feat, although he doubts they will succeed. “They did not think to write their addresses and, accordingly, the chances that someone would write to them are approximately zero,” added their father.
7. The note was discovered 40 years later by someone committing walk in Sequoia National Park 
The old rusty canister had been buried in the ground for 40 years, but there was something about it that caught the eye of Larry Wright, a 69-year-old resident of Oakland, California.
Walking near Milestone Mountain in National park Sequoia National Park) with his son Aaron and grandson Skyler, Wright came across what looked like a film container buried in the ground. Inside was a beautifully preserved handwritten note dated August 17, 1972. It read the following:
“Tim Taylor climbed this summit on Thursday August 17, 1972. Age 13. Who will find this note - write. "
Fascinated by the optimism of the note, Wright began his search for Taylor, which lasted a full month. He began his search by visiting the house listed in the note, where he met its current owner, Koichi Uyemura, who explained that his family had lived in the house for the past 18 years. Uemura believed that his family was the third in a row to buy this house after the Taylor family left it.
He also tried to find Tim Taylor through the voter register and Google, but until he contacted the local newspaper, La Cañada Valley Sun, he could not find anything. The newspaper ran an article about Wright's find, and calls from family and friends began pouring in to Taylor, who is currently a San Diego County Superior Court Judge. Taylor explained that he buried the note on the day he was hiking with his group of Boy Scouts. He decided to climb on his own to an unknown peak, located at 3657 meters above sea level, because it was not indicated on the Boy Scouts map. He also revealed that it was his father who instilled in him the habit of leaving messages in bottles for strangers to find.
8. Two women became penpals after one of them found a message in a bottle 40 years ago.
Rosalind Hearse met her US pen pal at the beach, where she found her message in a bottle 40 years ago. The note washed up on the beach near the village of Margam, South Wales, after Sandra Morris threw it into the sea from a ship. Since then, women, who are already 48 years old, have not stopped texting.
It seems that the messages in the bottle are sent exclusively to shipwreck victims and only to the movies. The chances that someone will be able to find such a letter, and even more so that it will fall into the hands of the addressee, is negligible. Anything can happen to the message: sea water will spoil it, the bottle may sink, or whoever finds it will simply throw it away like garbage. But sometimes the truly impossible happens, and the letter in the bottle finds its addressee.
In 1784, Chunosuke Matsuyama and 43 others left Japan for the islands in the South Pacific in search of the treasure. During their voyage, the ship was thrown onto the reefs, and soon it sank. The treasure hunters ended up on a desert island without food and fresh water: they managed to find only a few coconuts and crabs.
Matsuyama understood that they were doomed to a slow death, so he took a thin piece of bark and carved a message on it telling about their sad fate. He placed the message in a miraculously preserved bottle and threw it into the ocean. None of the treasure hunters managed to escape, and they remained on this island forever.
The bottle has been floating on the ocean for 150 years. In 1935, she was discovered by sailors near the village of Hiraturemura, where Matsuyama was born.
In July 1968, after a vacation in Europe, eight-year-old Sandra Morris returned to the United States on a transatlantic liner. She wrote her address and a small message on a postcard, sealed it in a bottle and threw it overboard. The girl wanted someone who finds this bottle to write her a letter. Three months later, also eight-year-old Rosalind Hears, walking on the beach, found Sandra's message.
Hears wrote to Morris, and thus began a forty-year friendship. Penpals once met and continued to communicate with whole families for many years. Four decades later, Sandra and Rosalind celebrated the anniversary of their wonderful friendship on the same beach where the sea brought the bottle with the cherished message.
In 1979, Californians Dorothy and John Peckham celebrated Christmas on a Hawaii cruise. Traditionally, the crew and passengers threw bottled messages overboard for good luck. The couple wrote a letter in which they asked whoever found the note to reply with a letter, and even put a dollar in the bottle to pay for the postage.
Four years later, 9,000 miles from where the Peckhams had thrown the bottle away, it was found by Hoa Van Nguyen, who had fled Vietnam with his brother. Believing that the note was familiar to him from above, Hoa Van Nguyen carefully kept it. Arriving in Thailand and settling in a refugee camp, Hoa wrote to the Peckhams that he had found their message. The couple received the letter on March 4, 1983, the day John turned 70.
Hoa and the Peckhams began a penpal friendship. Over the next two years, Hoa married and asked the couple to help him move to the United States. The Peckhams agreed to comply with Hoa's request, and soon after, the Van Nguyen family settled in Los Angeles, thanks to a friendship that began in the most incredible of circumstances.
In 2001, 10-year-old Laura Buxton, at her grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary celebration in Staffordshire, England, wrote her name and phone number on a piece of paper and put a message in balloon hic. He was inflated with helium, and the girl released the message into the air. Having flown 140 miles, the balloon landed on a field in Milton Libourne, Wiltshire. The farmer who found the message took it to his neighbor's daughter, who, by a surprising coincidence, was also called Laura Buxton.
After reading the letter, Laura hastened to contact its author. The girls chatted on the phone and realized that they were similar in many ways. Laura, who found the note, was only a few months younger than her namesake. Both of them were fair-haired, about the same height and even had the same pets. After a while, the girls met and since then have become inseparable.
On September 9, 1915, 26-year-old British soldier Thomas Hughes was sent to France to the front. He wrote a letter to his wife, which said, “Dear wife, I am writing this message on this boat and sending it out to sea to see if you will receive it. If this happens, sign the envelope in the lower right corner where the stamp is. Set the date and hour of receipt, write your name and save the message. Kisses, honey. Your hubby. "
Hughes also wrote a second note, in which he explained the purpose of this whole venture, and asked the finder of both notes to deliver the message to his wife. Hughes sealed the two pieces of paper in an old ginger beer bottle and threw it into the English Channel. Two days later, Hughes was killed in action, leaving behind his wife and young daughter.
After the war, Elizabeth Hughes and her daughter Emily moved to New Zealand where she died in 1979. It wasn't until 1999 that someone named Steve Gowen was fishing on the shores of Essex and discovered a bottle. He was still able to track down Emily and find out that she still lives in New Zealand. The New Zealand Postal Service paid for Gowan and his wife to fly to Auckland, and Emily finally received a message from her father 85 years later.
In 2005, 88 migrants from Peru and Ecuador were captured by smugglers heading to the United States. Near Costa Rica, the ship was caught in a storm. The smugglers fled the ship, leaving the hostages without any means of communication.
The ship ran aground, supplies on board quickly ran out, and the passengers had to do at least something to try to survive. They wrote a message asking for help, put it in a bottle and threw it overboard. Fortunately, the fishermen found the bottle just three days later. They reported this to local authorities and the ship was quickly located. The passengers, most of whom were women and children, were severely dehydrated, but all survived.
On Christmas Day 1945, Frank Hayostek was returning from service in France. When he reached New York, he wrote a note that said: “Dear friend ... I am an American soldier ... I am 21 years old ... I am an ordinary American, not rich, but I can still achieve something ... This is my third Christmas away from home ... May God bless you ... "
Frank wrote his name, gave his home address, and sealed the message in an aspirin jar and threw it into the Atlantic. Eight months later, he received a letter from 18-year-old Brad O'Sullivan, whose father found the note on the beach near Dingle, Ireland. The letter was the beginning of a romantic correspondence, and in 1952, Frank finally went overseas to see his girlfriend.
Unfortunately, the newspapers found out about this amazing friendship and literally lashed out at Frank and Brad, making a whole sensation out of a romantic meeting. It turned out to be too harsh a test for the young couple, and the relationship did not work out. Hyostek returned to the USA ... and again sent a message in a bottle.
On April 16, 1995, a boy named Josh Baker wrote this note: “My name is Josh Baker, I am 10. If you find my message, please report it on the news. Date: 04/16/1995 ″.
He sealed the message in an empty bottle and threw it in White lake in Wisconsin, where she sailed for a decade. When Baker turned 18, he was drafted into the army and served in Iraq for a year. Josh returned home safely, but a few months later died tragically in a car accident in 2005. Of course, his death was especially difficult for his parents and friends.
A year later, a certain Steve Leader was vacationing on White Lake with Josh's best friend Robert Duncan. Steve accidentally found the bottle in the trash and was shocked when he saw a message from Baker in it. Friends delivered a note to Josh's mother, who took it as a sign that her son in the next world does not forget about her.
Sea voyages can get a little boring and lonely, and in 1955, 18-year-old Swedish sailor Ake Viking saw it for himself. Therefore, he wrote a letter that began with the words: "A distant and beautiful stranger." He wrote about himself and thought that the one who finds this message, perhaps, will write him an answer. After sealing the letter in a bottle, Ake threw it into the sea. Two years later, the Viking received an envelope from Sicily. He had to ask a friend to translate a letter from 17-year-old Italian Paolina. She wrote like this:
“Last Thursday I found a bottle on the beach. Inside it was a message in another language. I took it to our priest, he is a great scientist. He said it was Swedish and with the help of a dictionary he read your lovely letter. I am not a beauty, but it is so much like a miracle that such a small bottle swam for so long and far and finally came to me, so I could not help but answer you ... "
They continued to exchange letters, and soon the Viking arrived in Sicily. A short time later, Ake and Paola, who learned about each other in such an unusual way, got married.
Hurricane Sandy almost completely devastated East Coast USA in late 2012, but a Long Island janitor managed to find a washed up ale bottle with a message inside. He took the note to his boss, and he immediately called the phone number indicated in it. It was the phone of Mimi Feri, who lost her 18-year-old daughter in an accident in 2010. The message in a bottle was written by Sidonie Feri ten years ago.
A note found two years after Sidonie's death helped Mimi somehow come to terms with the loss and try to live on. On a small piece of paper, the girl left a quote from her favorite childhood movie - "The Incredible Adventures of Bill and Ted", as if calling out to everyone who finds her message: "Be cool to each other!"
With the sea and long sea voyages, there have always been many secrets and mystical stories, but nothing can compete with the incredible twists and turns and events of such an unpredictable real life. Take the risk of sending a message in a bottle and maybe the sea will give you a pleasant surprise.
Scientist predicted many scientific discoveries and inventions, but bottle mail is not his pen business. It is believed that long before the beginning of the 19th century, in which the famous Frenchman lived, the Greek philosopher Theophrastus in 300 BC, tried, through a bottle message, to prove the movement of sea currents. One of the vessels thrown by him, after a while, was found near the coast of Sicily.
Since then, the era of using the seas and oceans as messengers and even "guinea pigs" began. I wonder that even now, it's pretty popular view communication and communication - however, sometimes, across oceans and continents, years and even centuries.
It is interesting! Nowadays, bottled mail is answered on Facebook.
Historical events by bottle mail
Christopher Columbus, while on a sea expedition after he discovered a new continent, was caught in a violent storm. Certainly, the navigator wanted to preserve and transfer historically important data to Queen Isabella. He quickly transcribed the information from the ship's log onto a scroll, sealed it in a bottle and threw it overboard in the hope that the letter would get to the right place. Only 360 (!) Years later American Jones Haynes fished this bottle in the Strait of Gibraltar. Truth or fiction - scientists still argue.
In 1560, a fisherman caught, at first glance, an unremarkable bottle and broke it. For his curiosity he paid with his head (there is nothing to learn the latest news before the queen!) - the message contained a spy's report for Queen Elizabeth I. Following this incident, a new honorary position was introduced at the court - a sea bottle opener.
It is interesting! Father George has chosen an unusual profile for himself. He was called the "bottle pastor" for throwing bottles into the sea with exhortation prayers for alcoholism. They say that those who fished out such a bottle considered it a divine act and quit drinking. Father George has 20 thousand of these messages on his account!
The sea is a guinea pig
Officially, the oldest letter (apart from the message of Christopher Columbus, which looks more like a legend than a truth) is a message on the study of the deep current of the North Sea. Not at all romantic, but quite believable. The letter, which has been traveling by sea for 98 years, is entered in the Guinness Book of Records. The author turned out to be Captain Hunter Brown of the Glasgow School of Navigation. He conducted an experiment in which he released almost 1,900 bottles into the sea on June 10, 1914.
Hunter Brown was not alone in his research. Maritime mail has long been used to study various oceanographic phenomena and conduct scientific research. Starting with Theophrastus, the Frenchman Laguinier, the famous oceanographer Albert of Monaco, the explorer John Franklin - at various times, experts from different countries they threw tens of thousands of bottles into the seas, into different planets. They considered such "littering" to be justified - in the name of science, for example, in the study of Okhotsk and Japanese seas at the beginning of the 20th century, in sea waters more than 10 thousand (!) "mail" containers were thrown.
People and the sea: a vessel as a signal "SOS"
Previously, sailors were the most frequent addressees. Especially those who were shipwrecked or ended up in the role of Robinson Crusoe. True, such messages rarely fell into the right hands on time. But there were also happy occasions. on a yacht, which could have ended badly, ended well thanks to a sea bottle.
In 1984, residents of a coastal town fished out a bottle with a letter, which indicated that a certain person had been thrown onto uninhabited island, he is running out of food and drink. As it turned out, it took the bottle only four days to "get" to the continent, which saved the yachtsman's life.
Sea bottle - a symbol of friendship, love and wealth
Sea mail, alas, rarely delivers messages to the address. Often, they either rest on the seabed or are found years or even decades later. Although ... For example, a girl from, desperate to find love, decided to send in search of the constricted sea bottle with her photo and coordinates. The bottle was caught in the net by a fishing schooner, the captain of the ship found the girl, and the story ended with a wedding.
And how many stories about an unexpected inheritance? The Englishman Bill Horton received 2 million pounds sterling by bottle mail from a certain rich old woman, who did not know whom to make happy with her wealth, wrote a will, threw it into the sea, and died alone. And Horton became rich.
Bottle mail is an amazing thing, with its help people at all times were saved, found true friends or even love, explored the ocean and even received fabulous riches. And today, at times, wandering along the seashore, you can stumble upon a letter from the past. Be careful, who knows what the sea brought you, or maybe it's fate itself?
Perhaps many have heard of messages in bottles. This is an exotic way of transmitting a message, when the sender cannot be sure that it will be received at all. It is believed that bottle mail only exists in romantic works, but this is far from the case. Letters have been sent this way for centuries. There are many intriguing and entertaining stories associated with the "post of Neptune".
The emergence of bottle mail
Historians believe that the first sender of the bottled notes was the ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus. Traveling beyond Gibraltar along the shores of the Atlantic, he sent several sealed vessels with notes on the waves. In them, he asked the finder to respond. Thus Theophrastus set out to investigate the currents in the Mediterranean. According to legend, one of his messages was soon discovered in Sicily.
Messages in a bottle and fiction
Bottle mail is often found in the adventure literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. A message in a sealed vessel, suddenly brought by water from an unknown distance, is intriguing. Domestic readers remember well the round-the-world adventure of the British company in the novel by Jules Verne "The Children of Captain Grant". His letter in three languages with an appeal for help was found in the stomach of a shark, which prompted the heroes to further travel. The messages in the bottle also found characters in the novel “ Mysterious Island»By a French writer.
This way of presenting information was also used by Edgar Poe in his early short story "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle", Howard Lovecraft in "The Little Glass Bottle", Victor Hugo in the novel "The Man Who Laughs." The perpetrator describes his mysterious murders and sends a message over the waves in the novel Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie.
Report bottles and the last witnesses of the tragedies
A bottle with an unexpected message is a good plot, but it wasn't Jules Verne who came up with it. For many centuries sailors, finding themselves in a desperate situation, thus sent the last news about themselves, in the hope that they would be saved.
Christopher Columbus, while traveling to the shores of America, sent notes in vessels to get them to the expedition's sponsor, Queen Isabella of Castile. Several of them made it to the addressee. According to unconfirmed reports, in 1852, one of the bottles of Columbus was discovered by the captain of a ship in the Strait of Gibraltar. True, experts consider this find a hoax.
Another naval power in England even had a special procedure for handling "postal" vessels. Since 1560 under fear death penalty it was forbidden to open sea finds. They were to be given to the Royal Uncorker of Ocean Bottles. Under Elizabeth I, this post was held by Lord Thomas Tonfield. During his first year in office, he received 52 "bottles from the ocean." Every time Tonfield went to report to the queen, she asked: "Well, what does Neptune write to us?" Information from informers and numerous denunciations were delivered to her in tarred bottles. For almost two and a half centuries, the law was in force, and all this time the threat of the death penalty did not disappear.
How more ships sea powers explored the most hidden corners of the Earth, the more often they found themselves far from trade routes and possible assistance in the event of a shipwreck. In such cases, the last and only hope to send a message to relatives often remained - to write a note, put it in a bottle and send it to unknown waters.
Often on earth they learned about the tragedies that had occurred precisely from the "mail of Neptune". Such messages appeared every year, they were published in the press. In one of the 1865 editions of the Wellington Independent in New Zealand, you can find a note:
"23 jan. 1865 - we are sinking, the pumps are not working, latitude 35., longitude 19.30, Captain John Roberts, screw steamer "Golden Eagle". Anyone who finds it, please give it to the nearest magistrate. "
It is immediately reported that fisherman Richard Marshall, while walking along the coast of Southport, found a tightly sealed bottle containing the following message:
Ivory Gull drowns off Mann Island, November 4. The team is drunk. God help us! J. Tomlin, Captain. "
Record bottle
In 2014, German fisherman Konrad Fischer found a sealed dark brown beer bottle in the nets. It contained an old postcard with two German marks. From the text it became clear that the message was sent by the German Richard Platz in 1913. He asked the finder to write to his address in Berlin. The appearance of a 101-year-old note from his great-grandfather came as a shock to the Platz family, because they knew nothing about him.
How Neptune's Mail Helps Find Love
In 1957, 18-year-old lonely sailor Ak Viking, during a cruise, wrote a letter that was addressed to "A lonely beauty who is far from here" and threw it into the sea, crossing Gibraltar. She was found by 17-year-old Paolina Pozzo in Sicily. Correspondence began between the young people, and they soon got married.
Bottle mail for research purposes
Researcher Dean Bumpus collected and bought used beer, whiskey, wine and champagne containers, washed them and sent them out to sea with notes. From 1956 to 1972, he sent more than 300,000 bottles to the ocean. Thus, the scientist figured out how floating objects move off the coast of America. In this he was assisted by volunteers from the navy, coast guard, fishermen, and research vessel personnel.
Each bottle contained instructions and a card that the finder had to fill out and send to the institute where Dean Bumpus worked. For every bottle found there was a 50-cent bonus. Over the years, 10% of messages were returned. Most of them were found in the first months and years after the "dispatch".
Dean Bumpus' research program was not the first, but one of the largest in scope. Despite the emergence of new technologies, thousands of bottles of various scientific organizations are floating in the sea today.
Scrapbook bottles are a romantic relic of the past that can still be found today. You can also see it today.
