Random Mysterious Messages Found In Bottles (14 items)

• 

  (#1) A Message That Saved A Family's Lives

  Curtis Whitson, his 13-year-old son, and his girlfriend, Krystal Ramirez, went backpacking at the Arroyo Seco River in California for Father's Day weekend in 2019. Though Whitson is familiar with the Central California coast forest, and takes as many as 20 backpacking trips there every year, he didn't expect to find himself trapped between 40-foot rocks and a strong water current. 

  Whitson and his crew planned to float down the river to their campground, but the currents made the river impassable, and the rope previously in place to help hikers out of such a situation was gone. Once they realized they were stuck, the group used the paper they had on hand to write a message that read, "We are stuck here at the waterfall. Get help please," and the date, June 15, 2019. 

  They placed the message in a green water bottle, scratched "HELP" into the side, and tossed it over the waterfall. Two unidentified hikers found the message, and the California Highway Patrol rescued the three stranded hikers the following day. 

  Whitson and Ramirez are looking to identify the hikers who found their message to thank them for saving their lives. 
• 

  (#2) A Haunting Message From The Titanic

  Many people have undoubtedly wondered over the years if any of the Titanic passengers had the time and presence of mind to write a note, find a bottle, and toss it into the Atlantic as the great ship was sinking. Well, it turns out someone did.

  A young Irishman named Jeremiah Burke was traveling with a cousin to join their family in Boston. He was off to start a new life and was excited about the possibilities. So, when the Titanic began to sink and Burke realized he would perish, he managed to write out a note. Before his departure from Ireland, his mother had given him a small bottle of holy water. In his last moments, Burke put his note into the bottle and cast it into the sea. His note read:

  "From Titanic, goodbye all, Burke of Glanmire, Cork."

  Sadly, both Burke and his cousin perished in the sinking and his poignant message washed ashore in the bottle a year later, just a few miles from his home.
• 

  (#3) Unfinished Business Aboard The Lusitania

  The Lusitania was once a luxury ocean liner, meeting its demise within years of the Titanic. Despite the fate of its predecessor, the Lusitania continued to sail undeterred by the dangers brought about by World War I. That is until the great ship was tragically hit by a German torpedo in May 1915 while on its way from New York to Liverpool. The damage was so severe that the Lusitania sank in only eighteen minutes. More than 1,000 people lost their lives and only around 700 were rescued.

  Somehow, there was one passenger aboard who had the presence of mind and the time to dash off a quick note, put it in a bottle, and set it adrift before the end came. The unknown author chillingly wrote: 

  "Still on deck with a few people. The last boats have left. We are sinking fast. Some men near me are praying with a priest. The end is near. Maybe this note will…"  

  The writer of the message must have realized the he only had a few moments left to roll up the note and secure it in a bottle, tossing it into the sea just in time.
• 

  (#4) Heartbreaking Auschwitz Message In A Bottle

  Not everyone who feels the need to cast a message off into the universe in a bottle has a body of water available to them. There are some bottles with messages found not only on seashores, but on land. Such was the case in a hauntingly sad story from Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp.

  This bottle, which was discovered in 2009 by construction workers near the camp, held a message dated September 9, 1944. On that day long ago, a desperate camp inmate recorded the names, camp assigned numbers, and hometowns of seven male Auschwitz prisoners.
• 

  (#5) Discovered Message Leads To A New Life

  A couple vacationing in Hawaii in 1979 decided to have a bit of fun by placing notes - and cash - inside empty champagne bottles and tossing them into the Pacific from their cruise ship. The couple, Dorothy and John Peckham, added one dollar to each bottle as a way to provide postage to anyone who should find the bottles and wish to write back to them.

  Dorothy and John waited four years before they received a response. Then, in 1983, they received a letter from a former Vietnamese soldier named Hoa Van Nguyen, who had found one of the champagne bottles with his brother under rather difficult circumstances.

  At the time the brothers discovered the bottle, they were floating helplessly off the coast of Thailand in an attempt to escape their miserable lives under the Vietnamese government. When they reached shore, they used the dollar to purchase postage and mailed a letter to the Peckhams.

  They wrote asking if the couple would be able to assist the Nguyen family relocate to the United States. The Peckhams were thrilled to receive the letter and determined to make the Vietnamese family's immigration happen. Two years later, in 1985, the Peckhams met Nguyen and were able to help him and his family move to the United States to begin a new, happier life.
• 

  (#6) The Oldest Message In A Bottle From German Ship Called Paula

  In 2018, an Australian woman discovered the oldest known message in a bottle on sand dunes in Australia. Tonya Illman discovered a bottle while walking along the beach and picked it up, thinking it would be an attractive decoration to place on her bookshelf. To her surprise, her son's girlfriend noticed a rolled up piece of paper secured with a small piece of string inside the bottle. After letting the bottle and note dry out, Illman and her family found unrolled the note to find handwriting in German it that included information about the location and route of a ship called the Paula. 

  At first, Illman assumed the message was a hoax. However, Illman's husband did some research online. The message included a date, which corresponded with an ongoing program conducted in Germany from 1864 to 1963. Captains would routinely throw bottles in the sea and write down the name of the ship, the date, the precise coordinates, and the travel route. Given the message included this information, the family took the bottle to a maritime museum where a curator determined the message was authentic and had indeed been released as part of the program. 

  The message in the bottle was roughly 132 years old. This makes it the oldest known message in a bottle, surpassing the previous record of 108 years. 
• 

  (#7) A Message That Is Better Late Than Never

  Another poignant World War I story involving a message in a bottle concerns a young British soldier named Pvt. Thomas Hughes. It was 1914, the first year in the war, and Hughes was lonely aboard a transport ship. He wrote a letter to his wife, but with no way to mail it to her, he decided to take a chance and stuff the letter into a ginger ale bottle, seal it, and cast it into the English Channel. Poor Pvt. Hughes died only two days later on a French battlefield. His wife never received his letter.

  But that was not the end of the story. Decades later, in 1999, the bottle was found bobbing around in the Thames by a local fisherman. He and others tried to find Hughes' wife, but it turned out she had passed away in 1979. However, a little more digging produced some good news - it was discovered that Hughes had a daughter, who was then an elderly 86-year-old living in New Zealand. She was only one year old when she lost her father, but she lived to receive the letter he wrote to her mother all those years ago. His message read:

  "Dear Wife, I am writing this note on this boat and dropping it into the sea just to see if it will reach you. If it does, sign this envelope on the right hand bottom corner where it says receipt. Put the date and hour of receipt and your name where it says signature and look after it well. Ta ta sweet, for the present. Your Hubby."
• 

  (#8) A Far-Flung Message Of Love

  In 1956, a young Swedish man named Ake Viking was out at sea and lonely for love. One evening, he decided to send his quest for love out into the ocean via a message in a bottle.  After all, back then there were no Internet dating sites. The note included his contact information and a message that read, "To Someone Beautiful and Far Away."  

  He did not seriously think anything would come of it, but two years later he received a response from an Italian woman named Paolina. When she wrote back to him, she explained: "[it's] so miraculous that [the bottle] should have traveled so far and long to reach me that I must send you an answer."

  The two began to write letters back and forth, and fell in love over the course of their correspondence. Eventually, the couple met and Viking left his life at sea to marry Paolina and move to Sicily.
• 

  (#9) The Oldest Survivor

  More than 100 years ago, navigators and nautical chart makers used "float bottles" to learn more about the currents and tides in different bodies of water. In 1914, the Glasgow School of Navigation in Scotland cast more than 1,889 bottles into the sea. Each of the bottles contained a printed card with instructions describing how to report the bottle back to the navigation school.

  Fast forward to 2011 when a Scottish fisherman finally found one of the bottles while pulling in his fishing nets. To date, it is the oldest message in a bottle found in the modern era, and is recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.

  Over the years, more than 300 of the project's nearly 2,000 bottles have washed ashore.
• 

  (#10) Star-Crossed Lovers

  On a lonely Christmas Day in 1945, a 21-year-old soldier named Frank Hayostek was returning from WWII to start a new life back home. While leaving on a transport ship, he tossed a letter in a bottle overboard, hoping that maybe his message would be discovered and he'd make a new friend.

  The bottle floated around the sea for eight months, finally washing ashore in Ireland where a 19-year-old milkmaid named Breda O'Sullivan found it, read the note, and decided to write to the young veteran, marking the beginning of their seven-year correspondence. Eventually, Hayostek's interest was piqued enough to plan a trip to Ireland and meet O'Sullivan, who was also keen to meet Hayostek.

  He didn't make much money, but was able to set aside thirty dollars per month, and after six years he at long last flew to Ireland. Somehow, the international press heard of the long-distance romance, and pursued the couple as Hayostek arrived at Shannon Airport.

  Apparently he stayed in Ireland for two weeks, but nothing is known of what happened during that time, except that the romance fizzled out.
• 

  (#11) The "Uncorker Of Ocean Bottles"

  Queen Elizabeth I ruled England during the mid- to late-16th century. Her long reign was considered a Golden Age, but it was also known as an age of danger, intrigue, and piracy. Indeed, Queen Elizabeth I encouraged piracy - then politely known as "privateering" - and even affectionately referred to her favorite pirates as "Sea Dogs." It was not uncommon for pirates and other nefarious types to attempt to transmit messages via a floating bottle.

  The Queen considered such messages so important that she created the office of the royal “Uncorker of Ocean Bottles.” The holder of this position was the only person authorized to open discovered floating bottles, and anyone else caught attempting to uncork an "ocean bottle" would be arrested and charged with a capital crime.
• 

  (#12) A Mother's Love

  Sometimes, due to death or distance, a person is unable to send a message to a loved one in the conventional ways. Such was the case for a French mother crossing the English Channel on a ferry back in 2002. She had lost her son, Maurice, when he was only thirteen years old. In her grief, she sent a teardrop shaped bottle, some items of children's clothing, and lilies into the sea. The bottle contained the following heartbreaking message:  

  "Forgive me for being so angry at your disappearance. I still think there's been some mistake, and I keep waiting for God to fix it… Forgive me for not having known how to protect you from death. Forgive me for not having been able to find the words at that terrible moment when you slipped through my fingers."

  The bottle and other items drifted away from the ferryboat and out of sight. However, the bottle was retrieved only a few weeks later when two individuals named Sioux Peto and Karen Liebreich found it on a beach in Kent, England. Captivated, the two women had the letter translated and searched for the letter's author for several years, resulting in the publication of Liebreich's book, The Letter In The Bottle, detailing the discovery and search.

  A few years later, the mother - who remains unnamed - contacted Liebreich and the two women finally met in France.
• 

  (#13) The Professional

  Harold Hackett, a resident of Prince Edward Island in Canada, had a lifelong interest in the mystery of messages floating in bottles. In 1996, the amateur fisherman decided to try sending such bottles out to sea and wait for the results. To increase his chances of having even one bottle retrieved by someone, he sent more than 4,800 bottles - complete with messages - into the sea.

  Over the years, he has received more than 3,000 responses from the delighted people who found them.
• 

  (#14) Testing The Waters

  Sending off a message in a bottle is nothing new. While the first known glass bottles were made around 1500 BCE, the earliest recorded example of casting one into the sea didn't take place until 310 BCE when Ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus took the plunge.

  The message he sent is unknown, but his intention was to demonstrate the theory that the waters of the Atlantic Ocean created the Mediterranean Sea.

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking