‘Bottle Post’ and other Drifts

Abstract

Most readers of this Journal will know a good deal about the long-established practice of setting adrift in the sea sealed bottles or other watertight vessels containing messages or questionnaire papers. There are numerous records stretching over a very long term of years of this having been done with the aim of conveying information—often in a jovial sort of way, but sometimes when it was feared that a ship seemed likely to be lost. In the latter case to which very few authentic records relate, mariners fearing the worst adopted the practice for obvious enough reasons. In the former case, records of the practice are legion and, a century or so ago, it was a common thing for floating bottles with papers inside to be flung overboard from outbound emigrant ships. The habit was still fairly common in much more recent times, and the writer once had quite a goodly number of missives recovered from stranded beer and wine bottles which, after the conclusion of a farewell party, had been thrown out from ships bound for America from the Elbe and other departure points. Generally speaking, such corked bottles were used empty (apart from the enclosed message), and so would perform journeys decided in large part by the winds. Where a serious intent lay behind the launching of a bottle designed to convey true news of distress, no very strong hopes could ever have been reposed in the glass messenger, since there could never have been any idea as to when it might go ashore and be found. It is probable that many bottles carrying messages of the sort have, over the years, been broken on rocky coasts or have stranded on unvisited shores perhaps to suffer burial in shifting sands.