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Traveller24 recently ran a story about a young woman’s message in a bottle that had been discovered in Mossel Bay.
Back in 2001, 13-year-old Angela Harris had filled a glass bottle with a few personal items – a necklace, a ring belonging to her younger sister, the wrapper of her favourite chocolate and a sachet of shampoo – as well as a note, giving a short description of herself and requesting the recipient to get in touch via post or telephone.
Although she had probably hoped for a much speedier reply, she finally received a response to her letter 14-years later when a man discovered it while walking along the beach with a metal detector.
He managed to track Harris down and made contact with her on Facebook. She had, in the meantime, forgotten all about her little treasure. However, on receiving news of the find, she told Netwerk24 that memories of that holiday came flooding back and that she had been inspired to write the letter, as she longed to make new friends and maybe even find a bit of romance.
Fascinated by the sweet tale, we decided to scour the internet for more amazing letter-in-a-bottle stories.
Here are four of our favourites:
85 Years later...
In 1914, a British World War I soldier Thomas Hughes wrote his wife a love letter, placed it in a ginger beer bottle and tossed it into the English Channel. Two days later he died while fighting in France. A full 85 years later, a man called Steve Gowan dredged the bottle up while fishing in the River Thames and made work of finding Hughes’ wife. Sadly, she had died 20 years before, but he did manage to find their 85-year-old daughter who had only been a year old when her father died.
Source: BBC News
The oldest message in a bottle ever found
In March 2014 a German fisherman discovered a very old beer bottle bobbing around the Baltic Sea just off the coast of Kiel. He hauled it in, opened it up and found a message scribbled onto the back of a postcard, asking the recipient to send it back to the sender’s home address.
It was handed in to the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg and researchers immediately set to work trying to find out where it came from. They soon managed to establish that the note had been written by 20-year-old Richard Platz who had tossed the bottle into the ocean while hiking with a nature appreciation group in 1913. Best of all, however, is that they also managed to locate his 62-year-old granddaughter, Angela Erdmann, who lives in Berlin and handed the magical little piece of history over to her.
Source: Huffington Post
A miraculous love story
Unsurprisingly, it seems as though romance has been the main driving force behind most message-in-a-bottle stories. However, the sweetest one by far is the story of Ake Viking, a bored and lonely Swedish sailor, and a Sicilian fisherman’s daughter called Paolina.
According to a 1959 report in the American Weekly, Ake had decided to relieve the tedium of life at sea by writing a letter ‘To someone beautiful and far away,’ as he inscribed it. He added his home address, a brief description of himself, asked the recipient to write back to him, whoever they may be and then rolled it up and tucked it into an empty bottle, replaced the cork and tossed it overboard.
Amazingly enough he received a response two years later after returning from another voyage. It was postmarked Syracuse, Sicily and written in Italian. He got an obliging shipmate to translate it for him and discovered that it was from the 17-year-old Paolina. She told him how she had taken the letter to the local priest, ‘who was a great scholar,’ and that he had translated it from Swedish with a little help. She ended it off by saying “I am not beautiful but it seems so miraculous that this little bottle should have travelled so far and long to reach me that I must send you an answer.”
The two started exchanging letters feverishly, and Ake left for Sicily two years later to marry his long distance love.
Source: Hoaxes.com (don't let the URL put you off, as they discover that the story is in fact 100% true)
Eerie last words
One of the greatest civilian tragedies of World War I was undoubtedly the sinking of the Lusitania ocean liner by a German U-boat in which a total of 1 191 people lost their lives. The ship was returning to Liverpool from New York when the torpedo hit just off the coast of Ireland in the Celtic sea. Apparently it took only 18 minutes for the ship to sink.
However, in this short time one of the passengers on board obviously had the urge to reach out as he/she faced death. The unnamed person penned a poignant and eerie message, which read: “"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 letter was never signed off and the assumption is that the writer decided to pop it in the bottle and toss it out to sea before the ship went down completely. Although the story seems highly unlikely, it has been widely referenced in reliable sources such as National Geographic.
Source: Paul Luvera
Do you have a message in a bottle story of your own or want to share your travel experiences? We'd love to hear from you! Tell us in the comment section below, send us a mail to info@traveller24.co.za, tweet @traveller24_sa, connect with us on Facebook or tag traveller24_sa on Instagram
