THROWN INTO SEA NEAR PANAMA

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22306, 21 January 1938, Page 4

THROWN INTO SEA NEAR PANAMA

CARD WASHED ASHORE ON QUEENSLAND COAST

AUCKLAND MAN REGAINS SOUVENIR

ITHK PRESS Special Service.)

AUCKLAND, January 20

After bobbing on the Pacific Ocean for two years and six weeks, a bottle containing the card of an Auckland businessman was washed up on trie Queensland coast about 40 miles nortn of Townsville on January 9 this year, and was found by a 13-year-old boy. who sent the card to the address it bore. ' . . Sliehtly soiled, but with the vnS cription y written ?n it still legible, the card was received by Mr H. i. CastaiSg. of Auckland, who threw the bottle containing it into the sea on November 5, 1935 The printing on the card read as. follows: H. T. Cas taing, managing-director Ml ™" g Trust, Limited, Auckland, New Zealand." On the back of the card fa ntly discernible in parts, were- the follow ing pencilled word: "5/11/35. Finder please return this card, thrown overboard from R.M.S. » a nS ltßt * .K days from Panama, New Zealand bound." , .„„,. "Please find enclosed one of youi cards with the request to return it to you," states the letter from the finder, Bryan Davies, of Mutarnee Ingham Line, via Townsville, North Queensland. Written in a neat hand, the letter was received by Mr Castaing to-day. "I was down at the beach at the mouth of Ollera creek, which, by the way is frequented only by a few settlers that live in the vicinity, with my mother, brothers, and sisters, when I picked up the bottle with the card enclosed," the letter says. "A few yards away from the bottle i found the skeleton of an alligator, measuring about 10 feet in length, so I took the skull of that for a souvenir. Would you kindly forward me a duplicate of the enclosed card for another souvenir?" Bryan Davies added that he found the bottle approximately 40 miles north of Townsville. It was washed ashore by the tide on January 9, and he thought it was the "biggest fluke in the world" for the bottle to have been found, as the beach 100 yards to the north was just a mass of stones, and if it had been washed ashore there it must have been smashed up. "I really was surprised to receive the card," said Mr Castaing. "I thought about it about a year ago. but after that presumed I would hear nothing further of it."

Captain Richmond, of Auckland, when the matter was referred to him. said the bottle would have been taken into the south Equatorial current, which (lows in a circular motion in the South Pacific Ocean. It works in an easterly direction south of the Equator, and anything caught in it would eventually be caught up again by the current. Had the bottle not been washed ashore, it would have gone round and round with the cui'rent in an everlasting flow.