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An Australian family found a bottle on a beach in Western Australia that turned out to have been tossed into the ocean. It turned out to be 131 years and 223 days between jettison into the ocean and recovery on that beach.
Tonya Illman was walking along the sand dunes on Wedge Island when she spotted the bottle sticking out of the sand. It was obviously old and she thought it would look good on her bookcase. When the damp sand was tipped out, she discovered a rolled up piece of paper, tied with a string. The Illmans took the bottle and paper home and put the paper in the oven for five minutes to take out the moisture.
The paper contained printing in German and some faint handwriting. They took it to Dr. Ross Anderson, the assistant curator of Maritime Archeology at the Western Australian Museum. After some research, he was able to confirm that the date on the paper of June 12, 1886 was authentic.
Archival research in Germany actually had a record of this bottle being thrown overboard into the Indian Ocean from the German ship, Paula, which at the time was travelling from Wales to Indonesia. It was apparently part of a 69-year experiment in which thousands of bottles were thrown into oceans in order to trace ocean currents and help mariners find faster shipping routes. Each message marked the ship’s coordinates and requested that the finder contact the German Consulate with the information on where it was found.
It was estimated that the bottle was probably a year at sea before landing on the Wedge Island beach. Shifting sands probably buried the bottle for a time and kept it damp which would have preserved the paper inside.
Of the thousands of bottles and messages thrown into oceans for this experiment, 662 or the originals have been found and the German authorities notified. But this particular one is now considered the oldest message in a bottle.
