The first recorded message in a bottle was reputedly tossed in the Mediterranean in 310 B.C., an experiment by the Greek philosopher Theophrastus. Since then, people have relied on the ocean’s waves to carry their words near and far. Sometimes with a little help from beyond the sea…
The first recorded message in a bottle was reputedly tossed in the Mediterranean in 310 B.C., an experiment by the Greek philosopher Theophrastus. Since then, people have relied on the ocean’s waves to carry their words near and far. Sometimes with a little help from beyond the sea…
Credit: Alamy Stock Photo
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Steve Leidel found the bottle in April of 2005. It had once held vanilla extract. But when Steve fished it from a lake in central Wisconsin, it held a letter. “My name is Josh Baker,” the note read. “I’m 10. If you find this, put it on the news.” It was dated April 16, 1995. That wasn’t the only amazing part. Josh Baker? Steve knew that name. In fact, everyone in White Lake, Wisconsin knew that name. Josh had been somewhat of a hometown celebrity. At 18, he’d become a Marine. While he was in Iraq, the whole town rallied behind him, sending him letters and care packages. Everyone was overjoyed when he returned home. Just months after his homecoming, though, Josh was killed in a car crash. The entire town was devastated. Then the bottle resurfaced. “He wanted us to find this,” Steve told CBS News. Josh’s message did end up on the news, just like his 10-year-old self had wanted. More importantly, it was a sign of comfort to his mother. As she said, “When that message came – and I don’t care how hokey it sounds, this is the truth – that was Josh saying, ‘Snap out of it. Mom. I’m here. I’m OK.’”
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In August 2015, 6-year-old Shiloé Khokhar was on vacation with her family in Bermuda when she got an idea. She’d toss a message in a bottle into the sea, like she’d seen in the movies. Shiloé placed a note in a small glass bottle, along with a pretty rock she’d found in a nearby cave. She urged whoever found the message to reach out via her father’s email address. Shiloé was convinced the bottle would make it all the way to England. “I didn’t think it was really going to go anywhere,” her father told Newsday. But go somewhere it did. Three years later, Shiloé’s father got an email—from Morocco! The bottle had been found by fisherman Hassan Elbaz. Unable to read or write, Hassan gave the letter to his son, Ayoub, who reached out to Shiloé and her family. What amazed Ayoub most wasn’t how far the bottle has travelled, but the message it carried. In a child’s messy scrawl – poor grammar and all – Shiloé had written, “I want to wish you a happy and health life.”
Just before Christmas 2016, Christine Cunningham walked the dunes of Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, while beachcombing for scallops and other treasures. Did she ever find something! A glass bottle in pristine condition—without a scratch or barnacle on it. She could see a rolled-up piece of paper inside. Christine’s husband, Aaron, managed to open the bottle. The letter it contained was dry and had the same typed message in three languages: “Dear finder, this message in a bottle set off in autumn 2011 on the occasion of the marriage between Christine and Nils in northern Germany on 19 August 2011.” Christine couldn’t believe it. Not only had the bottle traveled thousands of miles to British Columbia, but she shared the bride’s first name. Even more startling, she had married Aaron that same weekend in August 2011! What were the chances? Christine and Aaron tracked down the other Christine to Egestorf, Germany, where she runs a violin shop with her husband. The two couples became fast friends, thanks to a nudge from the ocean.
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Angela Erdmann never met her grandfather. He’d died in 1946, six years before she was born. She rarely thought of him… until the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg, Germany came calling. “It was very surprising,” Angela told The Guardian. “A man stood in front of my door and told me he had post from my grandfather.” Apparently Angela’s grandfather – Richard Platz – had thrown a bottle in the sea while on a hike in 1913. He was 20 years old at the time. Although much of the postcard in the bottle is indecipherable, Richard’s home address in Berlin was legible. The bottle, which had been at sea for 101 years, was found by a fisherman in the Baltic and taken to the International Maritime Museum. It was there that Angela was able to read her grandfather’s words. “I knew very little about my grandfather, but I found out that he was a writer who was very open minded, believed in freedom and that everyone should respect each other,” she said. “It was wonderful because I could see where my roots came from.”
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“To Someone Beautiful and Far Away…” That’s how Swedish sailor Ake Viking started his message. Bored at sea one day in 1955, Ake penned a letter to a potential love interest, hoping the waves would take care of the rest. He asked whoever found it to “write to me, whoever you are.” He included his mailing address in Sweden. Then he slid the letter into a bottle and threw it over the side. Two years later, Ake returned home from another voyage to find a surprise in the mail. A letter from Paolina, a 17-year-old Italian girl in Syracuse, Sicily. She’d found Ake’s message in a bottle and taken it to a parish priest to translate. “Last Tuesday, I found a bottle on the shore,” Paolina wrote in her reply, which one of Ake’s shipmates translated. “I am not beautiful, but it seems so miraculous that this little bottle should have traveled so far and long to reach me that I must send you an answer….” Ake and Paolina became long-distance pen pals, exchanging letters and photos over the course of a year. They wed in 1958, brought together by the currents of love.
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April 11, 1912. That was the day 19-year-old Jeremiah Burke boarded the RMS Titanic in Queenstown, Ireland, bound for America. The third-class Irish passenger—a native of Glamire, in County Cork—planned on joining his older sister in Boston. But four nights into its journey to New York City, the “unsinkable” Titanic struck an iceberg and sank. Jeremiah went down with the ship, lost in the North Atlantic. Thirteen months later. That’s when a man stumbled upon a little bottle while walking his dog on the beach in Dunkettle—just miles from Jere-miah’s home in County Cork. He took his find to the police station. Jere-miah’s family was notified. They recognized the bottle at once. It was the vial of holy water that Jeremiah’s mother had given him before he set sail. The bottle contained a note in pencil, the holy water gone. Apparently, Jeremiah had used his own bootlace to fasten it. “From Titanic. Good Bye all,” it said. “Burke of Glanmire, Co. Queenstown.” A message that traveled more than a thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean to find its way home.
Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
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The message in this bottle was a question: “Is it better to love or be loved?” Australian teacher Anne O’Sullivan was travelling on a cruise ship past the central Indonesian island of Komodo when she tossed the bottle overboard. “We’re sitting in our balcony pondering. Is it better to love or be loved?” the message read.“Your answer will be appreciated. Call us or write to us.” Anne soon forgot about the bottle. Fifteen months later, though, she received a phone call. It was from a woman in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa named Fiona Marlton. She’d discovered the bottle while strolling along the Mozambican shoreline. And she had an answer for Anne. “It’s better to be loved,” Fiona said. “But to be loved you must love.”
