Messages In Drifting Bottles

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31440, 5 August 1967, Page 5

Messages In Drifting Bottles

(Specially written for “The

Press” by

DON GRADY.)

Another chapter in the history of the world’s great messenger service bottles thrown into ocean currents—was written by a child playing at North Brighton Beach, on Sunday, July 16.

The child, Anne Denton, of Bryndwr, found a bottle containing a Marks and Spencer plastic bag with a message inside, dated April 16, 1964, from M. McWhinnie,. c/Master L Gaywood, 2 Romney avenue, Cooling Farm Estate, Folkestone, Kent, England. The message asked the finder to write. . . .

Her bottle was only one of about 10,000 to 12,000 that have at some time been washed up on beaches or are drifting about somewhere. For centuries blank lines in the sea’s great dramas have been filled in by messages sealed in bottles —and in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I the reading of bottle messages by unauthorised persons was a hanging offence. Today, the sending of messages by bottles is in use more than ever before. Bottles have been thrown into the sea to trace important currents and to:

Find wives, fathers for children, and recipients for fortunes. Save souls of sinners and the lives of castaways. Give away prizes of miniature ships. Obtain a Christmas tree.

Strangely enough, many of these messages in bottles—any kind of bottles, whisky, lemonade, and salad oil—have achieved their objectives. Ocean currents carried one bottle-message 10,000 miles—from the southernmost tip of South America to New Zealand.

A bottle, with a message inside, thrown by a New Zea-

land soldier from a troopship about 1944 washed up seven miles from its destination about 13 years later. The bottle had drifted 660 miles from Norfolk Island to the soldier’s home town, Waipu. The record lapse of time between the sending of a bottle message and its discovery is almost 200 years. An International Bottle Club member records that a bottle thrown into the Mississippi river by a soldier of the Confederate Army, sending a message to his sweetheart, was found 200 years later off Ryde, in the Isle of Wight

Bottle messages have played their part in history.

In-the reign of Queen Elizabeth I a fisherman found a bottle bearing an important political secret. As a result the Queen appointed an official “uncorker of bottles.” She made

the reading of bottle messages by unauthorised persons a hanging offence.

Bottle Romance

The bottle-in-the-sea method has its romantic side. On Christmas Day, 1945, Frank Haystek, then a 21-year-old United States soldier aboard a Liberty ship, wrote a wistful letter saying he was lonely, sealed it in a bottle, and threw it into the Atlantic. A dark-eyed Irish girl Breda O’Sullivan, then 18, of County Kerry, found the letter while walking along a rocky beach near her home.

She replied—and she married the soldier. She found this note in the bottle: “This not may never be found, but I got the idea from a fairy-tale picture as a little boy. My conscience guided me to do this. “I have no reward to offer except friendship to the finder. I’m just a plain American, and appreciate life and happiness.” Breda wrote to Haystek telling how she found the bottle: “I drove the cows to the fields beside the sea and then

went for a walk on the sand,” she said. “The cork of the bottle crumpled in my fingers. How the note kept dry nobody can understand. God brought it to safe harbour. This is something for the farmers to talk about while they cut the oats and bring the hay into the barn.” The American soldier flew to Ireland in 1952—t0 his wedding with the Irish girl. Probably the most pathetic message was the bottle SOS of Harry O’Connor. It was found by three boys while at play on the shore at Marathon, a tiny village on Lake Superior, Canada, about 12 years ago. It read, “Come and get me. Almost dead. Sick for three weeks. Cannot get out.—O’Connor, lightkeeper.” Police set off at once in a boat to an island lighthouse two miles from the shore. There they found the 59-year-old keeper dead in his bunk. His boat had been washed away in a storm. His message had taken six days to reach shore. As the dying man lay waiting for help, he wrote a prayer which the police found beside him in the bunk. The padre read it at the burial service. Surprising Replies Message senders who have thrust hastily scribbled messages into bottles have received some surprising replies. This is what happened to a Swedish ship’s, engineer. Happily drunk, he threw a bottled message from his ship into the Indian Ocean promising he Would obey the finder’s every wish if he received a reply. Some months later a Colombo widow replied to the Swede, then in Stockholm, asking him to bring up her three fatherless children. It is not recorded whether he kept his promise. A bottle message in 1949 brought a fortune to the finder. In that year, a Cali-

fornian beach stroller found a bottle containing a message an English millionairess wrote in 1937. The letter bequeathed her entire estate to her lawyer and the finder of the bottle. The finder got a share of the estate. Preachers ' Among the most prolific of all bottle-message senders are hydrographic officers seeking information on the world’s ocean currents and bottlemessage preachers, who run a close second.

Bottle-preacher, George Phillips, of Tacoma, Washington, United States, and his enthusiastic followers have to date thrown more than 16,000 whisky bottles into the swift waters of Puget Sound. Known everywhere as the Whisky Bottle Parson of the Seven Seas, Phillips became a total abstainer in 1940; seized an empty bourbon bottle, inserted a religious tract, corked it and tossed it into Puget Sound. He became obsessed with the idea and gave up his business to carry out his unique bottle church. More than 1200 persons have responded to his messages from Australia, New Guinea, Hawaii, Mexico and the United States. Then, of course, there are the world’s biggest bottle senders: the hydrographers. Scientists over the years have arranged for ships, and more recently aircraft, to have arranged for ships, and more recently aircraft, to drop tens-of-thousands of bottled messages into the world’s oceans to see how they drift Post-paid postcards are supplied in the bottles. The scientists at the University of California’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography ask that finders fill in the details of where, and when, the bottles were found. Many of their bottles are believed to be still drifting, slowly, somewhere. . . .