If the Post Office seems frustratingly slow, try this one: a message-in-a-bottle that was found and opened 132 years after being tossed into the Indian Ocean by a sailor on a German trading ship. It’s claimed as a world (slow) record for bottle messages.
The bottle was found in the sand on Australia’s Wedge Island by a photographer who at first thought it was junk. Then she decided it would look good on a shelf and took a closer look, noticing the small document inside.
Translated, the document explained that “This bottle was thrown overboard on June 12th 1886 at 32° 49′ latitude south and 105° 25′ longitude south Greenwich east. From: Bark Ships: Paula, Heimath: Elsfleth.” On the back was a form to be filled out and sent to the German Hydrographic Office, indicating that it may have been one of a number tossed out to measure currents, a common practice at the time.
Entries from the ship’s log list a bottle tossed on June 18th. The German Hydrographic Office encouraged ships to drop bottles; more than 6,000 were dropped between 1864 and 1933, and with this new discovery 663 have been recovered, the most recent one in 1934. At least one other Paula bottle has been recovered, decades ago.
