On July 28, according to Ifl Science, the oldest message in a bottle ever discovered was found on a beach in Western Australia, existing for 132 years before being discovered.
On January 21, 2018, on a beach in Western Australia, at Wedge Island, Mrs. Tonya Illman stumbled upon an old bottle buried in the sand. Initially, Mrs. Illman thought the bottle would make a beautiful addition to her bookshelf. However, upon opening it, she discovered a damp piece of paper, tightly rolled and bound with string, featuring faded handwriting in German.
Before direct messaging became a norm, people often sent romantic messages in bottles. (Source: Shutterstock)
As Mrs. Illman and her husband began to investigate, they suspected that this discovery could be linked to a historical experiment conducted by the German Naval Observatory. This experiment aimed to study ocean surface currents by casting messages in bottles into the sea, hoping to gather data about the movement of these currents.
Mrs. Tonya Illman with the bottle found on the beach. (Source: Passage Maker)
The messages in these bottles included information about the date and coordinates of the bottle’s casting, the name of the ship, the route, and a request for the finder to report back to the German Naval Observatory or the German consulate with details about the time and place of the find. The details on Mrs. Illman’s paper indicated that the bottle had been cast into the sea in 1886 from a ship traveling from Cardiff, Wales, to Makassar, Indonesia.
After being examined and verified by experts from the Western Australian Museum and the German Naval Observatory, the message in the bottle discovered by Mrs. Illman was recognized as the oldest message in a bottle ever found.
Dr. Ross Anderson from the Western Australian Museum stated: “During an archival search in Germany, experts discovered the Meteorological Log of the ship Paula, with an entry dated June 12, 1886, recording the casting of the bottle into the sea. The date and coordinates matched exactly with the information on the message in the bottle.”
However, it seems that this record may not last long. In 2022, a plumber in Scotland discovered a message in a bottle that could date back 135 years. Additionally, a note in a turquoise bottle recently discovered on a beach in New Jersey may be even older.
Currently, the age of these papers has not been confirmed, but at least for now, the 132-year-old message from the historical experiment still holds its record.
