One of Bidder’s bottles used to elucidate ocean currents. (Photo : MBA Archive)
For centuries, many have relied sending messages and placing them inside bottles where they are transported afloat at sea. Some bottles were used to understand more about the ocean currents where some were sealed and were released into the vast ocean to prove grand romantic gestures.
However, a couple, Marianne and Horst Winkler, apparently just discovered a real message in a bottle that was washed up on a beach in Amrum, Germany.
A postcard was discovered rolled up inside the bottle which was dated back between 1904 to 1906, where it was then released into the North Sea. The message of the postcard is requesting for the finder of the message to send it to the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom and was written in English, Dutch and German.
According to the spokesman for the organization, Guy Baker, they were thrilled to receive this relic message from a bottle where they were not expecting any more of these postcards to arrive or be returned.
Baker also adds that there were originally 1,020 bottles released out to the North Sea by a man named George Parker Bidder where Bidder apparently had a thirst for knowledge for the sea particularly its currents and movements and eventually became the president of the Marine Biological Association from 1939 to 1945.
The message in the bottle's postcard was released by the association and made it available to view last Friday, August 21, 2015. For this study, the glass bottles were made to weigh down in order to float just above the sea bed.
Apart from returning the bottles to the association, the postcards also indicated that a "one shilling reward" will be given to the finder of the message from the organization. The organization also requires for the finder to include crucial information such as when and where they discovered the bottle.
Baker also reveals that most of those bottles were already returned by fishermen decades ago. To date, the association is requesting for the Guinness Book of Records to recognize this message in the bottle as the oldest message in a bottle ever discovered where the current record holder belongs to a scientific experiment conducted in 1914 and was recovered 99 years after.
