World’s oldest message in bottle washes ashore

This undated photo made available August 30, 2012, by the Scottish Government, shows the message in a bottle discovered by fisherman Andrew Leaper, which set a new world record for the length of time spent at sea, beating the previous record by more than five years.

An old English shilling was sent by the association to retired postal worker Marianne Winkler, who found the bottle in April during her holiday to the German island, about 310 miles (500km) away from the UK.

Once at the association, staff recognised the bottle was one of 1,020 released into the North Sea between 1904 and 1906 as part of a project to test the strength of currents.

“It is always a joy to find a message-in-a-bottle on the beach”, she told the Amrum News, a local website. “I think we got it on eBay”, MBA communications director Guy Baker told German newspaper Amrum.

Bidder was a former president of the association, and from the bottles he retrieved he was able to prove that the deep sea current flowed from east to west in the North Sea. These message bottles were used later in a study into the movement of sea currents, and were weighed down to float just above the sea bed.

He said that most of the bottles were found within months and the association had given up hope that any more would be found years ago. Written on a piece of paper inside were the words “Break the bottle”.

“Most of the bottles were found within a relatively short time”.

The note said whoever found the bottle would be given one shilling.

The world’s oldest message in a bottle to ever be found is believed to have been recovered – after 108 years at sea. Inside it, there was a postcard asking the finders to send it to the research association, with a promise of a money reward of exactly one shilling – the twentieth of a British pound.