In an age of instant communication, it’s difficult to imagine how long a message used to take to reach its destination. Before airmail, human relays, pigeon post and the pony express all had a measure of success. But who would put a letter in a bottle, throw it into the sea and expect a reply?
The recovery of the world’s oldest message in a bottle gives us a clue. One of more than 1,000 tossed into the ocean by British scientist George Parker Bidder between 1904 and 1906 in an experiment to map sea currents, it washed ashore at Amrum, one of Germany’s North Frisian Islands, more than 100 years later. Finder Marianne Winkler followed instructions enclosed in the bottle and replied to the now-deceased Mr Bidder’s employer, the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, England.
True to the promise in the note, they sent Ms Winkler a shilling for her trouble. Now that may not be the romantic outcome you expected, but it does suggest that even a message sent out into the void will one day get a response.
