DRIFTING 35 YEARS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 25, Issue 3760, 25 May 1936, Page 3

DRIFTING 35 YEARS

A SURPRISE FOR TROOPER JONES. ' A bottle containing a message which was thrown into the sea during the Boer War has been washed ashore near Albany, Western Australia, after drifting ou lhe ocean for 35 years.

•Year after year the letter screwed up inside au old fashioned sodawater bottle and addressed to Mrs O. J. Jones, care of Trudgeon, Cheltenham, Victoria, had been travelling slowly round the coast of Australia, a distance of about 1500 miles. It may have been held up for months at a time by some barrier of rock or bed of seaweed, and in many a storm it must have been hurled about by mountainous waves.

It is signed by Trooper Jones, and as he mentions that there were 1350 people on board it is believed he threw the bottle overboard after he left Melbourne for South Africa In the troopship Orient, the pioneer ship of the Orient Line. “Think and pray for our soldier son” is another legible sentence. We can itaagine Trooper Jones watching with emotion the receding shores of Australia, uncertain if he would ever see them and his relations again, and suddenly decided to send his people a last message.

In the records of the Old South African Soldiers Association there is Number 31,635, 2nd Scottish Horse. There Is also au entry that he sailed mentioned a Trooper T. G. Jones, from Melbourne on the 5360-tons steamer Orient on February 1, 1901. and joined the Scottish Horse in South Africa.

This was one of the two regiments composed of Australians, Canadians, and South Africans, as well as men from the Motherland, which was raised and equipped at his own expense by the Duke of Atholl. It is good to know that Trooper Jones survived the war. He is now over sixty and lives at Melbourne, and we have no doubt that the bottle with his message has by now been returned to him to become an heirloom for his descendants.