Oldest-known message in a bottle found on WA beach 132 years after being tossed overboard

Updated

A Perth family has made an extraordinary historical discovery after becoming bogged on a West Australian beach.

Tonya Illman was walking across sand dunes just north of Wedge Island, 180 kilometres north of Perth, when she noticed something sticking out of the sand.

"It just looked like a lovely old bottle, so I picked it up thinking it might look good in my bookcase," she said.

But Mrs Illman realised she had likely uncovered something far more special when out fell a damp, rolled up piece of paper tied with string.

"My son's girlfriend was the one who discovered the note when she went to tip the sand out," she said.

"We took it home and dried it out, and when we opened it we saw it was a printed form, in German, with very faint German handwriting on it."

The message was dated June 12, 1886, and said it had been thrown overboard from the German sailing barque Paula, 950km from the WA coast.

After conducting some of their own research online, the Illman family were convinced they had either made an historically significant discovery or fallen victims to an elaborate hoax.

German experiment in Dutch gin bottle

Between 1864 until 1933, thousands of bottles were thrown overboard from German ships, each containing a form on which the captain would write the date, the ship's coordinates and details about its route.

It was part of an experiment by the German Naval Observatory to better understand global ocean currents.

On the back, the messages asked the finder to write when and where the bottle had been found and return it, either to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg or the nearest German Consulate.

The Illmans took their find to the Western Australian Museum, where assistant curator of maritime archaeology Ross Anderson conducted a series of investigations.

He determined it was a mid-to-late 19th-century Dutch gin bottle, and the form inside was written on cheaply-made 19th-century paper.

But more needed to be done to shore up the bottle's authenticity, and he contacted colleagues in the Netherlands and Germany for help.

Captain's journal confirms 'extraordinary find'

The colleagues compared handwriting samples from the form and the captain's entries in Paula's meteorological journal.

"Extraordinary finds need extraordinary evidence to support them," Dr Anderson said.

"Incredibly, there was an entry for June 12, 1886, made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard.

"The date and the coordinates correspond exactly with those on the bottle message.

"The handwriting is identical in terms of cursive style, slant, font, spacing, stroke emphasis, capitalisation and numbering style."

Discovered 132 years after it was tossed overboard, it is the oldest-known message in a bottle in the world.

The second oldest was just over 108 years old.

Kym and Tonya Illman have loaned their find to the WA Museum to display for the next two years.

Topics: human-interest, history, history-education, oceans-and-reefs, perth-6000, lancelin-6044, cervantes-6511, germany, wa

First posted</s>A woman from Australia has found the world’s oldest known message in a bottle nearly 132 years after it was thrown into the sea, experts say.

Tonya Illman discovered the bottle half-buried in the sand on a beach in Western Australia, just north of Wedge Island, 180 kilometers (112 miles) north of the state capital Perth.

The message, dated 12 June 1886, was thrown into the Indian Ocean from the German sailing barque Paula, which was en route from Cardiff, Wales, to its destination of Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).

The bottle was one of thousands thrown into oceans as part of a 69-year-long German experiment on global currents to find faster shipping routes, the Western Australia Museum said.

Until now, the previous world record for the oldest message in a bottle was 108 years, four months and 18 days from the time it was jettisoned until its discovery, according to the museum.

Experts in Germany and Australia have confirmed the authenticity of the find.

Illman found the bottle near her son’s car which had become bogged in the beach’s soft sand.

“My friend Grace Ricciardo and I were walking across the dunes when I saw something sticking out of the sand so I went to take a closer look,” Illman was quoted as saying by the museum.

“It just looked like a lovely old bottle so I picked it up thinking it might look good in my bookcase. My son’s girlfriend was the one who discovered the note when she went to tip the sand out.”

“The note was damp, rolled tightly and wrapped with string. We took it home and dried it out, and when we opened it we saw it was a printed form, in German, with very faint German handwriting on it.”

The Illmans took their find to the museum which established the bottle was a 19th Century Dutch gin bottle, the paper and coloration were consistent with 19th Century paper, and the German barque Paula sailed from Cardiff to Makassar (Indonesia) in 1886.

“Incredibly, an archival search in Germany found Paula’s original Meteorological Journal and there was an entry for 12 June 1886 made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard,” said Ross Anderson, the museum’s assistant curator Maritime Archeology.

“The date and the coordinates correspond exactly with those on the bottle message,” he added.

Of all the bottles thrown overboard during the oceanographic experiment, 663 message slips have been returned to Hamburg. But only one bottle—that found at Wedge Island—has been returned.

This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Checkout Simplemost for other great tips and ideas to make the most out of life.</s>In 1866, sailors on a German barque called Paula tossed a gin bottle with a message into waters hundreds of miles off the Western coast of Australia.

One hundred and thirty-one years later, a Perth resident stumbled upon the bottle on Australia's Wedge Island.

It's believed to be the oldest-known message in a bottle, in terms of the amount of time that has passed between when it was written and when it was found. Before this discovery, Guinness World Records said that the oldest was 108 years old, found in Germany in 2015.

Australian, German and Dutch researchers worked together to verify the note's authenticity, according to a report from the Western Australia Museum.

Tonya Illman was walking on a sand dune in January when she spotted the old bottle. "I picked it up thinking it might look nice on display in my home," Illman says, according to an account on her husband's website.

The bottle had no closure and was partially filled with damp sand. Shortly after, Illman's son's girlfriend tipped out the contents and found a tightly rolled note covered in a piece of string.

Too damp to open initially, according to the account, the group waited for it to dry and were amazed to see that it was carefully handwritten in German.

"The first thing that caught my eye was the year field, 18__," said Illman's husband Kym. "It seemed totally unlikely to us that the note and bottle could have lasted that long and then be so easy to find."

The pair reached out to the Western Australia Museum, which set out to study and authenticate the document.

"Extraordinary finds need extraordinary evidence to support them, so we contacted colleagues in the Netherlands and Germany for help to find more information," Ross Anderson, the museum's Assistant Curator in Maritime Archaeology, said in a statement.

But this message is no SOS or love letter.

It's consistent with a major German naval experiment conducted from 1864 to 1933 in order to learn more about ocean currents, the museum said in a research report.

"Thousands of bottles were thrown into the world's oceans from German ships, each containing a form on which the captain would write the date it was jettisoned, the exact coordinates at the time, the name of the ship, its home port and travel route," the researchers said. "On the back, it asked the finder to write when and where the bottle had been found and return it, either to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg or the nearest German Consulate."

More than 600 of the message slips were returned, though it's been a long time – according to the museum, "the last bottle and note to be found was on 7 January 1934 in Denmark."

The researchers reached out to the German Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, which found that the handwriting on the note exactly corresponds to handwriting in the ship's log. That log indicates that a bottle was thrown from the ship along this route.

The German government agency stated that the detailed information about the ship and its route is "not easily accessible to the public," making it unlikely that the item is a fake.

The gin bottle – from the Dutch brand Daniel Visser & Zonen – is also consistent with the bottles produced by the company at the time, Dutch researchers said.

The bottle probably arrived on the western shores of Australia within a year of being thrown overboard, the research report stated. There, it is "likely to have spent the majority of its life buried within a layer of damp sand to have remained so well preserved, with a period of recent exposure allowing its fortuitous discovery by the finders."

The Illmans have loaned the message in a bottle to the museum for the next two years, and it will be on display starting Wednesday.

"This has been the most remarkable event in my life," said Tonya Illman. "To think this bottle has not been touched for nearly 132 years and is in perfect condition, despite the elements, beggars belief. I'm still shaking."</s>Oldest message in a bottle found in WA The West Australian

The world's oldest known message in a bottle has been found half-buried at a West Australian beach.</s>It looked like “a lovely old bottle,” but a woman from found something much more intriguing on the beach in Western Australia: the world’s oldest known message in a bottle, CNN reported.

Tonya Illman discovered the bottle, half-buried in the sand, with a note dated June 12, 1886. The bottle was thrown into the Indian Ocean from the German boat Paula, which was traveling from Cardiff, Wales to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), CNN reported.

According to the Western Australia Museum, the bottle was one of thousands thrown into the oceans as part of a 69-year-long experiment on global currents, CNN reported.

The previous world record for the oldest message in a bottle was 108 years, 4 months, 18 days from the time it was thrown into the water until the time it was discovered, the Western Australia Museum said.

The authenticity of the bottle was confirmed by experts in Germany and Australia, CNN reported.

Illman said she found the bottle near her son’s car.

"My friend Grace Ricciardo and I were walking across the dunes when I saw something sticking out of the sand so I went to take a closer look," Illman told the museum. “It just looked like a lovely old bottle so I picked it up thinking it might look good in my bookcase. My son's girlfriend was the one who discovered the note when she went to tip the sand out.”

Illman said the note was “damp, rolled tightly and wrapped with string.”

Experts said the bottle was a 19th century Dutch gin bottle, CNN reported.

“Incredibly, an archival search in Germany found Paula's original Meteorological Journal and there was an entry for 12 June 1886 made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard,”Ross Anderson, the museum's assistant curator Maritime Archeology, told CNN. “The date and the coordinates correspond exactly with those on the bottle message.”

The museum did not reveal what the exact message was.</s>A Perth family has found the world's oldest known message in a bottle, almost 132 years after it was thrown into the sea, Australian experts say.

Tonya Illman picked up the bottle while going for a walk around sand dunes on a remote beach in West Australia.

Her husband Kym Illman told the BBC they found some paper in the bottle but had "no idea" what it was until they took it home and dried it in the oven.

Experts have confirmed it is an authentic message from a German ship.

The note in the bottle, which was dated 12 June 1886, was jettisoned from the German ship Paula, as part of an experiment into ocean and shipping routes by the German Naval Observatory.

Previously, the Guinness world record for the oldest message in a bottle was 108 years, between it being sent and found.

The Illman family were driving through a beach north of Wedge Island on 21 January when the car became bogged down in the sand, and Mrs Illman and her friend decided to go for a walk.

"Tonya saw a whole lot of rubbish on the ground, and thought she'd help pick up some rubbish," Mr Illman told the BBC.

She found and picked up the bottle, thinking it would be nice for her bookshelf, he added.

Mr Illman said his wife passed the bottle "to our son's girlfriend, who saw what she thought was a rolled-up cigarette, and tipped it out with the sand".

"Tonya tried to untie the string around the paper, but it was rather fragile, so we took it home and put it in the oven for five minutes to dry up the moisture.

"Then we unrolled it and saw printed writing. We could see the hand written ink at that point, but saw a printed message that asked the reader to contact the German consulate when they found the note."

Later, they also noticed faint handwriting on the note, with a date of 12 June 1886 and the name of the ship, Paula.

When they saw the date they thought it was "too far-fetched" to be real, Mr Illman said - but they researched the bottle online and took it to experts at the Western Australian Museum.

Dr Ross Anderson, Assistant Curator Maritime Archaeology at the WA Museum, confirmed the find was authentic after consulting with colleagues from Germany and the Netherlands.

"Incredibly, an archival search in Germany found Paula's original Meteorological Journal and there was an entry for 12 June 1886 made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard. The date and the coordinates correspond exactly with those on the bottle message," Dr Anderson said.

The handwriting on the journal, and the message in the bottle, also matched, he added.

The bottle was jettisoned in the south-eastern Indian Ocean, and probably washed up on the Australian coast within 12 months, where it was buried under the sand, he wrote in his report.

Thousands of bottles were thrown overboard during the 69-year German experiment but to date only 662 messages - and no bottles - had been returned. The last bottle with a note to be found was in Denmark in 1934.

The bottle found on Wedge Island was found "mostly exposed without any form of cork or closure, and was about a quarter full of damp sand", and the bottle appeared to have lain "buried or mostly buried", partially filled with damp sand, Dr Anderson added.

Sand dunes in the area are quite mobile during storm events and heavy rain, so the bottle could have been subject to "cyclical periods of exposure" which could have led to the cork in the bottle drying out and becoming dislodged, "while the tightly rolled paper along with a quantity of sand remained inside preserved".

"The narrow 7mm bore of the bottle opening and thick glass would have assisted to buffer and preserve the paper from the effects of full exposure to the elements, providing a protective microenvironment favourable to the paper's long-term preservation," the report added.

The Illman family have loaned the find to the Western Australian Museum for the next two years, and it will be on display to the public from Wednesday.

WA Minister for Culture and the Arts David Templeman said he was "delighted" with the loan, adding: "It is truly an impressive find and thanks to the wonderful international and interdisciplinary cooperation of science and research, it can now also be shared with the world."

Writing online, Mrs Illman described the find as "the most remarkable event in my life".

"To think that this bottle has not been touched for nearly 132 years and is in perfect condition, despite the elements, beggars belief. I'm still shaking."</s>The world's oldest message in a bottle was discovered on a remote Western Australian beach, a museum announced on Tuesday.

An Australian family discovered a bottle half-buried in the sand of tiny Wedge Island, about 88 miles north of Perth. Inside was a tightly rolled piece of paper.

"(We) were walking across the dunes when I saw something sticking out of the sand so I went to take a closer look," discoverer Tonya Illman said.

"The note was damp, rolled tightly and wrapped with string. We took it home and dried it out, and when we opened it we saw it was a printed form, in German, with very faint German handwriting on it."

The bottle was handed to the Western Australian Museum for analysis, who coordinated with German and Dutch agencies to research its history.

"This bottle was thrown overboard on June 12, 1886 at latitude 32° 49' South and longitude 105° 25' from Greenwich East.

From: Bark Ship Paula, Port: Elsfleth, Captain: D [illegible], On her journey from Cardiff to Macassar.

The finder is requested to send the slip in the bottle to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg or the nearest consulate for the return to the same agency after filling in the information on the back.”

The WA Museum, along with the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) and the National Meteorological Service of the Federal Republic of Germany (DWD), determined that the message was genuine.

"Incredibly, an archival search in Germany found Paula's original meteorological journal and there was an entry for June 12 1886 made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard. The date and the coordinates correspond exactly with those on the bottle message,” Ross Anderson, assistant curator maritime archaeology at the WA Museum, said in a statement.

German authorities said the bottle was one of thousands thrown overboard during a 69-year-long oceanographic experiment to research global ocean currents and discover more efficient shipping routes.

The bottle likely washed up on the beach six to 12 months later.

The experiments were conducted by German scientist Georg von Neumayer who became the first Director of the German Naval Observatory in 1876 and was a leading figure in drift bottle research. His worldwide experiment provided valuable data on the great ocean currents.

Some 662 of the messages were returned to Hamburg (about 10 percent) but none of the actual bottles were ever returned. The last time one of the notes was found was in 1934 in Denmark.

"The appearance of the form from the bottle found is exactly the same as that of other forms from the year 1886, which were sent back in the following years to the German Seewarte and are available to us in the original. The forms have changed a lot over the years, but in the 1886 period the form is exactly what you have," the BSH told the museum.

Archival records revealed the ship carrying the newly-discovered bottle was most likely transporting Welsh steaming coal.

The bottle has been loaned to the museum for two years.

The previous oldest message in a bottle had a similar history but was sent by British researchers and discovered by a German.</s>The world's oldest known message in a bottle was dumped into the Indian Ocean 132 years ago. Tonya Illman, an Australian woman, and her friend came across the vintage bottle in January.

Illman found the bottle near her son's car on Wedge Island, which is located at 180km north of Perth in Western Australia.

Tonya's husband Kym Illman said that they had no idea about what exactly it was until they dried it up in an oven, BBC reported.

The bottle is green in color, measures less than nine inches long and is three inches wide. It has been defined as "an exceedingly rare find" by experts. It was tossed in the Indian Ocean as part of an experiment on ocean drift patterns, Washington Post reported.

The Western Australia Museum had released a report which revealed the details of how the vintage bottle was found and what message regarding science and history it uncovered.

Illman and her friend made the surprising discovery along the coast when her son's car got stuck in soft sand.

"It just looked like a lovely old bottle so I picked it up thinking it might look good in my bookcase," Illman said as quoted in a press release by Western Australia Museum.

"My son's girlfriend was the one who discovered the note when she went to tip the sand out. The note was damp, rolled tightly and wrapped with string. We took it home and dried it out, and when we opened it we saw it was a printed form, in German, with very faint German handwriting on it," she added.

The family wasn't sure whether their finding was a hoax or a historically significant finding. They took the bottle to a museum for the verification of its authenticity.

Experts in the museum analyzed the bottle closely, measuring the bottle's opening and the twine that had wrapped the yellowed paper inside it. The researchers speculated that the cork of the bottle shrunk or dried out and got displaced at some point, according to Washington Post.

The bottle is identified as a mid-to-late 19th century Dutch gin bottle by the museum staff. It is believed to have washed on to the shore within a year's time of being thrown into the water and it remained buried there since.

The paper inside the bottle was found to be well preserved. Two noteworthy details present on the paper were the date -- June 12, 1886 -- and the name of a ship called Paula.

Authorities in the Netherlands and Germany also helped in providing more about the bottle, which they revealed was was a part of a long-term German Naval Observatory programme to study global ocean currents in a bit to find shipping routes which were more efficient and quicker.

An entry for June 12, 1886 was made by Paula's captain in the ship's original Meteorological Journal, and it recorded that a drift bottle was thrown overboard on that day.

"A handwriting comparison of the bottle message signed by the captain and Paula's Meteorological Journal, shows the handwriting is identical in terms of cursive style, slant, font, spacing, stroke emphasis, capitalisation and numbering style," Dr. Ross Anderson, Assistant Curator Maritime Archaeology at the WA Museum, was quoted as saying in the press release by the museum.

"Ocean current and drift patterns are still not completely understood," Dr. Anderson stated.

"The need to understand long-term climate change patterns has also seen historic data, such as that recorded in Paula's meteorological journal and other 19th century ships' logbooks, added as datasets into global climate models," he added.

The bottle has been linked to German scientist George von Neumayer, who had carried out the 69-year-long drift experiment from 1864 to 1933, which included thousands of bottles.

This Wedge Island find takes the total number of message recovered from the experiment to 663, the last one was discovered in Denmark in 1934.</s>PERTH, Australia – In a Police song come to life in an epic way, a Perth woman just made history with a find on a Western Australian beach.

ABC News Australia and the BBC report Tonya Illman was strolling on Wedge Island at the end of January when she spotted what she thought was garbage and decided to pick it up. Instead, it turned out to be what she called a “lovely old bottle,” and she yanked it out of the sand to bring home to display on her bookcase.

But when her son’s girlfriend saw what she thought was a cigarette inside and dumped it out, it turned out to be a damp piece of paper, rolled up and tied with string, which they took home and put in the oven for a few minutes to dry out.

When they finally unrolled it, they were shocked to see the message in German. Dated June 12, 1886, the note appeared to have been tossed off a German boat called the Paula.

Illman and her husband, Kym, brought the bottle to the Western Australian Museum. Maritime expert Ross Anderson confirmed the old-time gin bottle had been part of a German Naval Observatory experiment between 1864 and 1933, in which messages in bottles were thrown overboard to study ocean currents. And in the Paula’s shipping logs, “Incredibly, there was an entry for June 12, 1886, made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard.”

That would make this the oldest message in a bottle at 132 years old; the previous oldest one, per Guinness, was 108 years old. Amazingly, the note was preserved despite the bottle having no cork and being partly filled with damp sand.

Anderson explains the bottle’s thick glass and narrow opening left the paper relatively unscathed. (This woman got a reply to her message in a bottle nearly a quarter-century later.)</s>(ABC News) — The world’s oldest message in a bottle washed up on a beach in Australia, about 132 years after it was thrown overboard a ship, according to 9 News in Australia.

Kym and Tonya Illman of Perth, Australia, found the bottle in January near Wedge Island, about 100 miles away from Perth.

“It just looked like a lovely old bottle, so I picked it up thinking it might look good in my bookcase,” Tonya Illman told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

When Tonya Illman took the bottle back home and opened it, she saw a tightly rolled piece of paper tied with string. The writing was in German.

“I could easily make out the day and month, June 12, but the year was harder to decipher,” according to Kym Illman.

After the Illmans laid the wet paper out to dry, “we had to wait a week before we had confirmation it was 1889,” Kym Illman wrote on kymillman.com, a website that he created detailing the discovery of the bottle.

After researching where the note could be from and using his basic German language skills, he discovered it was from the German ship named Paula. The message was a form filled out as part of a German experiment to understand ocean currents, according to ABC Australia.

The Illmans brought the note to the West Australia Maritime Museum, which confirmed the age of the message.

“This has been the most remarkable events in my life. To think that this bottle has not been touched for nearly 132 years and is in perfect condition, despite the elements. I’m still shaking,” Tonya Illman wrote on kymillman.com.

9 News also reported that the museum received evidence from Germany and the Netherlands that a captain kept a record of a bottle thrown overboard on June 12, 1886, for an experiment on ocean currents.

According to ABC Australia, thousands of bottles were thrown overboard from German ships, with messages containing a form with the ship’s coordinates. On the back of the note, messages asked the finder to write when and where the bottle had been found and return it to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg as part of a project to help the observatory understand naval currents.

The previous world record for the oldest message in a bottle was 108 years ago, according to 9 News.
A message in a bottle found in Australia is confirmed to have been adrift for almost 132 years, making it reportedly the oldest known message in a bottle.