The Oldest Confirmed 'Message in a Bottle' Contained Some Fascinating Questions

In 2018, a message in a bottle dating back to 1886 - 132 years ago - was found half-buried in the sand of a Western Australian beach. According to its contents, it spent more than a century swimming around, before it was discovered nearly 950 kilometers (590 miles) from where it was thrown off a ship in the Indian Ocean. Even though it was missing a cork, surprisingly, both the bottle and its contents were largely unscathed.

Those contents were part of a German experiment that ran from 1864 to 1933 to chart the ocean currents. During this time, thousands of bottles were thrown overboard from German ships. Each contained a slip of paper marked with the date, the exact coordinates of the ship when the bottle was jettisoned, the name of the ship, its home port, and the route it was travelling.

On the other side of the note was a questionnaire, where whoever found the bottle would write down when and where the bottle was found, then send the note back either to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg or the nearest German Consulate.

This bottle was thrown overboard
On 12 th June 18 86
In 32° 49' Latitude South
And 105° 25' Longitude from Greenwich East
From : Bark Ship: Paula Home (port): Elsfleth Captain: D [illegible]
On her journey from: Cardiff To: Macassar
The finder is requested to send the slip in the bottle to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg or the nearest consulate for the return to the same agency after filling in the information on the back.

Of the thousands of bottles jettisoned from German ships as part of the experiment, this discovery is only the 663rd. It's also the oldest to date - the previous record-holder was 108 years and 138 days between dispatch and recovery, and was part of a similar experiment run out of Britain.

Read the full news article on Science Alert