TRUE AND FALSE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 109, 4 November 1935, Page 13

TRUE AND FALSE

BOTTLE MESSAGES

LIGHT ON FATE OF SHIPS

REMAIIKAELE STOKES

It has been reported from. Sydney that a sealed bottle was found on the beach at Brunswick Heads, on the north coast of New South "Wales, about twenty miles south of the Queensland border, says a writer in the Melbourne "Age." The bottle contained a rough-ly-torn piece of greaseproof paper, on which was written the following mes-sage:—-"I, James Edward Martin, of Redfern, Sydney, am shipwrecked on an island, which I judge to be about 200 miles from Sydney, in the Pacific Ocean. Please rescue me." , The police believe the message to be a hoax. A shipwrecked man in appealing for rescue would have been able to give fuller particulars about himself, aboul the ship which was wrecked, and aboul the island on which he is: living; The police have not been able to trace ai Redfern any former resident named James Edward Martin. ;^ It is quite-a common ' thing for thoughtless, mischievous people to throw overboard while at sea bottles containing false messages about shipwrecks. In these days when nearly all ships are fitted with wireless; and can summon aid and make: known what disaster has befallen them, the mischief done by the hoaxer is small; but before wireless was installed on ships every big: disaster .at-''*sea-- was followed by a number -of bottle mes sages. After the ; Blue Funnel lihei Waratah disappeared off the east coasi of South Africa:in July, 1909, with s large number of Australian passengers who , were on their: way to England, via tlie Cape/five bottle messages purporting to have been written by passengers on the ill-fated ship were picked up at different-times, at various places: on the : Australian coast. The mystery, of. the fate-of the Waratah has never been7 solved. After the White Star liner Titanic foundered on hei maiden r voyage, off, ' Newfoundland, through collision with an iceberg, on April 15, 1912, there was quite acroj of:• faked messages ■'. found in bottles washed, ashore in the vicinity. It is the experience of LloycVs that 999 oul of 1000 bottle messages are fakes. . ■■■"■ ':, '" CASE OF : THEKENT. -. , ; One of the few genuine bottle messages; about a disaster at; sea relates to: the East. Indiaman Kent, whicfc was burnt in- the Bay of Biscay in March, 1825. Her crew and passengers •stood on her .decks .during a wild stormy night expecting the flames tc reach the powder magazine and blow the ship to pieces. During these anxious hoilrs a passenger, Major Macgregor, of the 31st Foot, wrote the following message and placed it in i bottle:—"The ship ■ Kent, Indiahman, is on fire. Elizabeth, Joanna, and myseli commit our spirits into the•- hands oi our blessed Redeemer, Whose grace enables us to be quite composed in the awful prospect of entering eternity (Signed) D. W. W. Macgregor, March 1, 1825. Bay of .Biscay.", The bottle containing this message was picked uj eighteen months later, at Barbados, ir the West Iridies, by a man who was bathing from the shore. . •; It is natural that faked messages never throw any real light on the fate of vessels that have disappeared mysteriously at sea. None.of the five mes sages relating to the Waratah supplied evidence of her fate which could be tested. The same thing, applies to twe bottle messages .concerning the fate of the ship Hurpti'ian, a vessel of 4430 tons, which left Glasgow on February 11,-1902, for St. John's, Newfoundland, loaded "with coal and general cargo. She was never seen after the pilot left her at Tail of Bank, off Greenock, and it is supposed she foundered in the Atlantic during a storm. Search was made for her by two British warships, but no trace was found, and a Board of Trade inquiry produced no evidence as to her fate. On June: 2 a bottle containing the following message was picked up off Owls Head, forty-five miles from Halifax, Nova Scotia:— "The s.s. Huronian turned over in the Atlantic on Sunday night. In a small boat, fourteen of us." This is a landsman's message, and probably false. If the Huronian turned turtle in a storm there would not have been time or opportunity to launch a boat, and if a boat had been launched it is unlikely it would have remained afloat more .than a few minutes in.a storm fierce enough to have overturned a ship of 4430 tons. ■■ "TOP HEAVY." Another bottle message which was probably genuine was picked up in 1907 five years after the disappearance of the Huronian. It was found on the shore at Castlerock, on the north coast of Ireland. The message the bottle contained was as 'follows:— "Huronian sinking fast. Top heavy. One side under water. Good-bye mother and sister. (Signed.) Charles McFall, greaser." The" records of the Allan line, to which the Huronian belonged, showed that one of the firemen on board was named McFall and that he had a mother and sister living. The following case of a genuine message from shipwrecked sailors will be within the recollection of some readers, though it "dates back fifty years. Two boys while playing on a/lonely stretch of beach at Fremantle saw an albatross struggling feebly in the water close to the shore. They caught the bird and dragged it ashore, where it died almost immediately. It had tried to swallow a large fish which had stuck in its throat. When the father of the boys examined the bird he found fastened round its neck a collar made out ot a piece of tin from a container in which preserved food had been packed. When the tin was detached the following message in French was seen to have been punched flri it, with a sharp instrument:—"Treize naufrages sont refugies sur les lies Crozets. Au secours pour l'amour de Dieu." (Thirteen sailors have taken on the Crozet Islands. Help, for the love of God.) . , The piece of tin was sent to the naval authorities at Sydney, and they came to the conclusion that the message was probably genuine. The Crozets are a small group of uninhabited islands belonging to France, and lying in the extreme south of the Indian Ocean. As they are considerably nearer to the Cape of Good Hope than to Australia, the admiral in command of the Australian naval station took the view that they were outside the area of his command, and for that reason he could not send a ship to them to investigate. Particulars were sent to the French naval authorities in Paris, and they reported that a small ship from Bordeaux, following-a course that would take her near the Crozets was overdue. TOO LATE. Anxiety concerning the fate of the shipwrecked sailors was relieved to some extent by the knowledge that there was a food depot on the islands. Eventually, when a French warship reached the Crozets it was too late to rescue the men. Another message pricked out on tin was found which stated that the food supplies had been exhausted, that all were on the point of starvation, and that they intended to attempt to reach another island on I the group in the expectation of finding another food depot. But apparently, they, had perished, in the attempt,

for no trace of them could be found. A different type of bottle message includes those which are thrown overboard from ships with the object of learning something about the ocean currents. By arrangement with the hydrographic department of the British Admiralty and the hydrographic department at Washington, hundreds of such messages are thrown overboard from time to time in special bottles by ships' officers. In this way a great deal of valuable information regarding ocean currents, has been gathered. Some of these bottles have drifted more than 5000 miles in the course of two or three years. The following are typical cases of bottle messages received in 1928 by the hydrographic department at Washington:— Thrown Overboard. Drifted. July, 1925 ...... 5400 miles August, 192G 2600 miles December, 1926 ......... 2500 miles January, 1927 400 miles April, 1927 4800 miles March, 1928 ..........J 700 miles May, 192S j..,. .." 100 miles REMARKABLE JOURNEY. A bottle which had been thrown overboard from the Orient liner Orvieto towards the close of 1928 while the vessel was off Colombo was picked up near Toulon, .on the Mediterranean coast of France, in May, 1933. The bottle, which contained a message asking the finder to notify its. recovery, is supposed to have travelled via the Cape of Good Hope to the north Atlantic, and then through th Strait of Gibraltar to the Mediterranean. In August, 1913,- an English school teacher threw a bottle message into the English Channel, which asked the person who found it to communicate with her at1 the address she gave. The following July it was picked up near Christchurch, New Zealand, having travelled.at least 12,000 miles in eleven months. Mr. Basil Chamberlain, an English business man, while: crossing the Atlantic from America, placed a visiting card in a scent bottle and threw it overboard in mid-Atlantic on December 18, 1919. On the back Of the card was a request to the finder to forward it to Mr.-Chamberlain's London address, in exchange for. £1 reward. It was picked up on July 9, 1920, on the Irish coast at Kinclasslagh, County Donegal. In 1920 a lifebelt from the Cunard liner -Lusitania, which was torpedoed on May 7, 1915, off the south coast of Ireland by a German submarine, was picked up in the . Delaware River, Philadelphia, U.S.A. Hydrographers were greatly interested in this lifebelt, and. they estimated that in. jits five years' drift it had travelled 12.00 C to 15,000 miles, i From ythe available information regarding ocean currents it was thought that the lifebelt went northwards, through the Irish Sea, and around the north. of Scotland; dowr through the North Sea'and the.Eng lish Channel, and down the coast o: France, Spain, arid-Africa. There th< current would take it, across the At lantlc until it reached the. Gulf Stream and it then drifted to the Delawan Capes. Probably the propeller of '« steamer caught it at .the Capes, am took it up. the :Delaware River. I was covered with barnacles when: i was found, but when these were scrap cd"off the vname Lusitania was easilj decipherable.- ■ FLOATING DERELICTS. Some interesting information regard ing ocean currents has been gatherei from the drift of floating hulks o shipwrecked craft, but these hulks ar a serious danger to snipping, especial ly when they drift along the trad routes..' The Italian liner Principess Mafalda, 9210 tons, ; which founderei 130 miles off the coast. of Brazil ii November, 1927, while proceeding fror Genoa to the Argentine via Rio d Janeiro, with more than 1000 passer gers on board, is supposed to hay collided with a floating hulk at high during a heavy sea. Although stean ers in the vicinity hastened to- th scene in response to her .wireless ai peals for assistance and-picked .ii: most of the boats in which passer gers had embarked from the: sinfcin ship, more than .200 lives were lost. In daylight the watch kept'on'boar ship is usually sufficient to avert dai ger from floating hulks, but on' a dar night or during log, it. is . impossibl to see a floating hulk if it is alnios awash. It is stated that there ar seldom fewer than twenty derelict ye: sels floating about the North Atlantii each of which might cause serious dan age to any ship which collided with i Most of these derelicts are small vesse: of under. ICOO tons, but they are larg enough to disable any ship that strike them at full speed. The America Government has in commission tw small vessels for the purpose of searcl ing for derelicts after their wher. abouts has been ; reported, and sinl ing them when they have been foum The average life of a ship that hi been disabled at sea and abandone by her crew is thirty days, but "the] are recorded instances of derelic floating about the Atlantic for month The American schooner W. L. Whit abandoned in March, 1888, off the coa of the United States, drifted' about tl ocean until she piled herself up c one of the Hebriaedan islands in tl following January, having been carri« 6000 miles in ten months. The mo remarkable derelict of recent yea: was the Nova Scotian schooner Go ernor Parr, 972 tons, which drift* about the Atlantic for eleven montt and defied many attempts to sink he She, left Ingramport, Nova Scotia, c September 25, 1923, With a cargo timber for Buenos Aires. A few da; later she ran into a. fierce gale, ar was disabled. Her crew abandon! her on October-3, 700 miles south Newfoundland, and during her coi paratively long life as a derelict h whereabouts in different parts of tl Atlantic was reported by no few than thirty ships.