Imagine walking down the beach and noticing what at first seems to be a regular bottle. Perhaps you pick it up, planning to keep it or to simply deliver it to the trash can. But, then you notice that it’s not a regular bottle. This is what happened to a couple walking on a beach on Wedge Island, 112 miles north of Perth, Australia.
“My friend Grace Ricciardo and I were walking across the dunes when I saw something sticking out of the sand, so I went to take a closer look,” said Tonya Illman, in a statement released by the Western Australian Museum. “It just looked like a lovely old bottle so I picked it up thinking it might look good in my bookcase. My son’s girlfriend was the one who discovered the note when she went to tip the sand out.”
It turns out that the bottle dates back to 1886 and is the oldest known message in a bottle. It was dropped in the ocean 132 years ago by the German ship called the Paula as a part of an experiment by German scientists to study ocean currents.
“After much digging, we were able to make out the date, the coordinates, the ship’s name and direction of the voyage,” said Mr. Illman. “It was clearly very exciting, but we needed a lot more information. We wanted to know if what we had found was historically significant or a very inventive hoax.”
Upon delivery to the Western Australian Museum, it was confirmed that the bottle and its contents were genuine.
“Incredibly, an archival search in Germany found Paula’s original Meteorological Journal, and there was an entry for 12 June 1886 made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard,” explained Dr. Ross Anderson, assistant curator of maritime archaeology at the Western Australian Museum. “The date and the coordinates correspond exactly with those on the bottle message.”
Watch the video below about this amazing piece of history and please like and share!
