World's Oldest Message In A Bottle Found On Beach In West Australia

The problem with declaring something to be "the world's oldest" is your item will only hold that title until someone finds something older, which will never stop happening as long as people are searching for old stuff.

So a few years back the world's oldest message in a bottle was found by a Scottish fisherman and was dated back to 1914, which makes it a youngster compared to the bottle Tonya Illman found on a remote beach in Western Australia.

The bottle found by Tonya dates back to 1886, and after she and her husband Kym removed the note in the bottle and dried it out in the oven they discovered it came from a German ship:

The note in the bottle, which was dated 12 June 1886, was jettisoned from the German ship Paula, as part of an experiment into ocean and shipping routes by the German Naval Observatory.

When they saw the date they thought it was "too far-fetched" to be real, Mr Illman said - but they researched the bottle online and took it to experts at the Western Australian Museum.

Dr Ross Anderson, Assistant Curator Maritime Archaeology at the WA Museum, confirmed the find was authentic after consulting with colleagues from Germany and the Netherlands.

"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. The date and the coordinates correspond exactly with those on the bottle message," Dr Anderson said.

The handwriting on the journal, and the message in the bottle, also matched, he added.

-Via BBC News


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Very interesting post! Thanks for posting. Also, check out more interesting stories of the message in a bottle at https://nexter.org/oldest-message-in-a-bottle-titanic-boy-last-words-and-4-more-amazing-floating-note-stories.
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