MESSAGE delivered a century later.
A Scottish fisherman hauled in the world’s
oldest Message in a Bottle this month, along
with a fresh catch of fish.
Andrew Leaper was pulling in his fishing
nets when he spotted the water wearied
bottle sticking precariously out of the
netting.
He rushed in to save the bottle before it
plopped back into the ocean, and noticed that
it contained a message.
After hurriedly extracting the note he
discovered it was in fact written 98 years ago
by Captain CH Brown of the Glasgow School
of Navigation.
The message asked the reader to record the
exact location where they retrieved the note
and to then take those details, the note and
bottle to the Scotland Fishery Board to collect
a sixpence reward.
The reasoning behind the message was so
that Captain Brown and the School of
Navigation could monitor current patterns.
Speaking to press after the find, Dr Bill
Turrell, Head of Marine Ecosystems with
Marine Scotland Science, said “Drift bottles
gave oceanographers at the start of the last
century important information that allowed
them to create pictures of the patterns of
water circulation in the seas around
Scotland”.
As yet Leaper has not confirmed whether he
will seek his sixpence reward, but has
described the find as like having won the
lottery twice, due to the fact that the
previous “world’s oldest message in a bottle”
was also found by a crew member onboard
the fishing vessel he was on when he scooped
up Captain Brown’s invitation.
