Bottle’s Remarkable Voyage

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 26, 26 June 1912, Page 11

Bottle’s Remarkable Voyage

During the voyage from London to Melbourne via the Cape, in 1908. of the steamer Indraghiri, a passenger on the ship, Mr 11. P. Adams, of Carshaltor Surrey, made a practice of putting over board each day a sealed bottle containing a note of the ship’s position and a request that the finder would notify him of the facts of the discovery. Of some forty bottles so launched, news of the first to be found has recently reached Air Adamis. The interesting fact was contained in a communication from a French gentleman residing in Santiago, L'hili, written in the early part of this year, as follows: —“Monsieur, Pendant le coin’s d’une exploration dans les archipels sud du Chili, j’ai rencontre une bouteille qui’ contenait un papier oil etait eejls ee quo suit: ‘Thrown overboard from the steamship Indraghiri, ■ Tyser line, November 17th, 1908, in lat. 51.38 south, long. 96.15 east. Will the finder kindly return this paper with particulars of the find to IL P. Adams, The Old Rectory, ( arshalton, Surrey, England?’ Ce paper qui a etc egare a etc trouve par moi stir la cote est de File de Wellington, archipel du slid du Chili, exaetment it la lat. 49.42 S., long. 74.25 W. J’ai I’honneur de vous saltier. Maurice Defi’arges, Santiago, Chili.” The bottle’s long voyage thus covered some 7000 miles, roughly, along the 50th parallel, and through the wildest waters on the globe, to a point almost exactly at the opposite of the earth from which it started. Its probable course will, according to experts in such maritime matters, have been along the eastern and northern coasts of New Zetland to a point somewhere near the Fiji Islands, where the .Southern Equatorial current will have carried it across the full stretch of the Southern Pacific for over 6000 miles; or it may have been swept due east at once by the Adriatic drift, fror.i its starting point on the fringe of the Antarctic Ocean, passing to the southward of New Zealand for more than 7000 miles, until it was east up on the eoast of Chili, about 400 miles north of Cape Horn. It would be interesting to know if there are any authentic records of a longer or more adventurous drift than this. It will be remembered that a lifebuoy belonging to the ill fated Waratah, which was presumably cast adrift at the time she sank off the African coast, was discovered on the coast of New Zealand many months after the steamer was lost, having drifted at least 7000 miles.