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Message In A Bottle

4/8/2016

14 Comments

 
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     "For as long as men and ships have sailed the waters of the earth, seagoing bottles have...charted unknown seas, solved mysteries, and revealed crimes. They have delivered messages for spies, brought criminals to justice, patched up quarrels between lovers, and brought romance to people thousands of miles apart. They have spread the Gospel, brought comfort to the troubled, tracked schools of fish, and predicted the course of oil spills. They have carried wills, caused lawsuits, and promised enormous fortunes. By tracking drifting mines powerful enough to blow a ship out of the water, they have saved countless   lives....
      "Whether they delliver a note from a scientist seeking knowledge of the restless sea's movements or a desperate appeal from a doomed mariner, seagoing bottles will continue to travel the world's broad oceans. And one might just turn up on anybody's beach." --The Twelve Million Dollar Note and Other Strange But True Sea Stories by Robert Kraske.

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      Who doesn't love the idea of wandering a long a quiet beach washed by a steady surf and looking down to see a bottle half-buried in sand, or resting in a pile of rocks, or stuck in the roots of a drifting log, and then notice a piece of paper rolled up inside?
      Nicholas Sparks based his novel Message in a Bottle on this premise, and there have been many more stories and books, fiction and non-fiction based on this adventurous and romantic mode of communication.
      My personal favorite story inspired by the "message in a bottle" idea, was one I read when I was a teenager written by famous western writer Louis L'Amour. Instead of putting messages in bottles and sending them out on the sea, a lone woman in a rough prairie cabin with two children, yearning for adult companionship, wrote messages and tied them to tumbleweeds that carried her messages over the plains. A lonely cowboy read them and collected them, re-reading them by campfire light and fell in love with the unknown sender.
     The book, Conagher, was later made into a movie starring Sam Elliot. it was a favorite movie of my mom's.

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     When I read Conagher I had a better understanding of my mom's sense of loneliness when I was a kid as she lived remote from all other adults, only seeing my dad once a week, weather permitting. The only humans she had to communicate with were her five children.
     I remember that she used to go and sit on the rocks next to the tumbling creek and write in a journal, messages of her thoughts and feelings that she couldn't share with anyone else. She never sent them out on the sea to be carried by winds and currents.
     I always wondered if you'd feel lonelier sending them out there and never hearing anything back, or if you'd feel more isolated if you kept all your messages to yourself where no one else could read them?

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     In the Nineties, my brother Robin was on a hunting trip that took him to one of the larger islands across the wide stretch of bay from us. While he was striding along the shore he noticed light reflecting off glass.
     Since we all collect glass balls from Japanese driftnets, he stopped to take a closer look.
     He found a clear glass bottle with a piece of paper inside it.

     Considering the number of boating accidents that occur in Alaska every year, it could have been sent by a boater on a sinking boat, or stranded on a beach. We've known friends and relatives who have been in this situation. It could have been written by a lonely woman living alone with her five kids in the remains of an abandoned and burned down cannery. It could have been the will of a wealthy person who wanted to let where her fortune went after death be dictated by chance winds and currents.
      As it turned out, it was indeed from a woman. However, she was tracking currents in Southeast Alaska and asked to be informed where the bottle came ashore. She'd sent it from Ketchikan, over forty miles to the south of where Robin found it. He wrote to her, but never heard back.
     But he lives in Ketchikan now, and who knows?
     One day he might bump into her and tell the story of finding a bottle with a message in it on a remote, uninhabited island....



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14 Comments
Sis link
4/8/2016 11:59:23 am

What lovely thoughts you have given me today . . . .

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ADOW
4/8/2016 01:27:15 pm

I'm glad, Sis. Thanks.

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Kathy
4/8/2016 02:40:26 pm

Enjoyed reading this...

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ADOW
4/8/2016 05:21:13 pm

Thank you, Kathy.

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Alaska Beachcomber link
4/8/2016 09:20:27 pm

Beautiful story and visuals!

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ADOW
4/10/2016 07:10:03 am

Thanks, Beachcomber. It's hard to go wrong with a message in a bottle--they've got all the mystery and sense of wonder any writer could hope for. And it's impossible to take a bad picture of one! :-)

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Vickie Griggs link
4/10/2016 06:20:17 am

Great post. In all the years I've walked the beaches of the world I never was lucky enough to find a message in a bottle. I never was lucky enough to launch a bottle due to the currents at Scott's point either lol. Loving your posts. Keep up the good work.

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ADOW
4/10/2016 07:15:49 am

Don't stop looking, Vicky! Just knowing they're out there is, for me, a wonderful thought. And thanks for the encouragement! Tara

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Nancy
4/14/2016 03:06:38 pm

I loved this blog! Messages in a bottle always are a thrilling topic. It got me thinking that even though I'm land-locked, the next time I'm near a river (hardly ever anymore), I should toss a bottle with a message into the river. Of course, I hope I don't get a ticket for littering! You write beautifully and it allows the poor reader (me) to visualize the words. Very powerful. Thank you. Nancy

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ADOW
4/14/2016 03:15:25 pm

Thanks you, Nancy. I thought I'd do a second blog at this at some point, and do like you said, put a message in a bottle and set it adrift. But I'll wait until I can get far enough off shore where it's legal. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

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Daneel
4/20/2016 11:40:00 am

The oldest message in a bottle ever found (news item):

Marianne Winkler was on vacation on the German island of Amrum last April when she stumbled upon an old message in a bottle that had washed up on the beach.

“It’s always a joy when someone finds a message in a bottle,” the retired post office worker told local website Amrum News. “Where does it come from, who wrote it and how long has it been traveling on the winds, waves and currents?”

The bottle, it turned out, was first released at sea more than 108 years ago. This week, Guinness World Records confirmed that Winkler’s discovery was the oldest message in a bottle ever found.

According to The Guardian, the bottle was tossed into the southern North Sea by marine biologist George Parker Bidder on Nov. 30, 1906. It was one of more than 1,000 such bottles Bidder released in batches as part of his research into the patterns of ocean currents.

Inside the bottle was a postcard with a message written in English, German and Dutch. It asked the finder to fill in the date and where the bottle was found, and to return it to Bidder, care of the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, England.

Winkler, who had no idea how old the bottle was when she discovered it, followed the instructions and sent the postcard to the internationally renowned research institution.

Although some of the other bottles released by Bidder, who served as president of the association between 1939-45, were returned over the years, the organization hadn’t received one in a long time.
“It was quite a stir when we opened that envelope, as you can imagine,” Guy Baker, the association’s communications director, told the Telegraph last August.

“I don’t know when one was last sent in, but I don’t think it was for very many years,” Baker said. “Most of the bottles were found within a relatively short time. We’re talking months rather than decades.”

The message in the bottle Winkler found was so old that the postcard had come with an outmoded promise.

“One shilling reward,” it read.

Shillings haven’t been used in the U.K. in decades, but the Marine Biological Association said it was determined to fulfill the vow.

“We found an old shilling,” Baker said. “I think we got it on eBay. We sent it to [Winkler] with a letter saying thank you.”

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ADOW
4/20/2016 12:52:32 pm

Thank you, Daneel--what a wonderful addition to my blog post!

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Susan Bernhardt link
4/28/2016 12:36:33 pm

This was a great post, Tara and how romantic. Thinking about your rhetorical thought/question, I can see about writing a note regarding one's feelings and send it off in a bottle into the unknown rather than keeping them to yourself and having these thoughts build-up. Much like you hear about write down negative thoughts to get them out of your system and then burn the paper.

Your mother might have wanted to leave a journal of her life and how she felt about things much like you do or seem to do. And she was probably lyrical like you.

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ADOW
4/28/2016 12:52:11 pm

Thank you, Susan, for your thoughtful comment and compliment. A message in a bottle is always so pregnant with mystery and adventure. That's a good point, about sending lonely thoughts off in a bottle so that they can't weigh you down. I love that.

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