message in a bottle

File:1786-Benjamin-Franklin-Gulf-Stream-cropped.jpg and James Poupard after conducting drift bottle experiments, apparently still unaware of the Gulf Stream's origin in the Gulf of Mexico.]]

File:'The Children of Captain Grant' by Édouard Riou 004.jpg drawing of a message in a bottle was included in Jules Verne's 1860s book In Search of the Castaways.{{cite book |last1=Verne |first1=Jules |title=In Search of the Castaways |date=1874 |publisher=J.B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia (original publisher) |edition=Project Gutenberg eBook released August 16, 2014 |chapter-url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46597/46597-h/46597-h.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160327004414/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46597/46597-h/46597-h.htm |archive-date=March 27, 2016 |chapter=Chapter 1. The Shark |url-status=live }}]]

Bottled messages may date to about 310 BC, in water current studies reputed{{sfn |Ebbesmeyer |Scigliano |2009 |p=229 }} to have been carried out by Greek philosopher Theophrastus. The Japanese medieval epic The Tale of the Heike records the story of an exiled poet who, in about 1177 AD, launched wooden planks on which he had inscribed poems describing his plight.{{sfn |Ebbesmeyer |Scigliano |2009 |pp=54-55 }} In the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I reputedly created an official position of "Uncorker of Ocean Bottles", and—thinking some bottles might contain secrets from British spies or fleets—decreed that anyone else opening the bottles could face the death penalty.{{cite web |url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120918-oldest-message-in-a-bottle-science-history-messages/ |title=Oldest Message in Bottle: Behind History's Famous Floating Notes |first=Jeremy |last=Berlin |work=National Geographic |date=20 September 2012 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160506022656/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120918-oldest-message-in-a-bottle-science-history-messages/ |archive-date= May 6, 2016 | url-status=dead}}{{sfn |Kraske |1977 |pp=53–56 }} (However, it has been argued that this is a myth{{cite web |url=https://messageinabottlehunter.com/message-in-a-bottle-myths/queen-elizabeth-official-uncorker-of-ocean-bottles|title=Queen Elizabeth's "Official Uncorker of Ocean Bottles" |first=Clint |last=Buffington}}.) In the nineteenth century, literary works such as Edgar Allan Poe's 1833 "MS. Found in a Bottle" and Charles Dickens' 1860 "A Message from the Sea" inspired an enduring popular passion for sending bottled messages.{{sfn |Ebbesmeyer |Scigliano |2009 |pp=55-56 |ps=, attributing to Becher, Alexander (1843, 1852). Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle.}}

Scientific experiments involving drift objects—more generally called determinate drifters{{sfn |Ebbesmeyer |Scigliano |2009 |p=50 }}—provide information about currents and help researchers develop ocean circulation maps. For example, experiments conducted in the mid-1700s by Benjamin Franklin and others indicated the existence and approximate location of the Gulf Stream, with scientific confirmation following in the mid-1800s.{{cite magazine |last1=Penry |first1=Jerry, LS |title=Message in a Bottle |url=http://www.theamericansurveyor.com/PDF/TheAmericanSurveyor_Penry-MessageInABottle_March2007.pdf |magazine=The American Surveyor |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140923001927/http://www.theamericansurveyor.com/PDF/TheAmericanSurveyor_Penry-MessageInABottle_March2007.pdf |archive-date=September 23, 2014 |date=March 2007 |url-status=live}} Using a network of beachcomber informants, rear admiral Alexander Becher is believed to be the first (from 1808–1852) to study travel of so-called "bottle papers" around an ocean gyre (a large circulating current system).{{sfn |Ebbesmeyer |Scigliano |2009 |pp=55-56 |ps=, attributing to Becher, Alexander (1843, 1852). Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle.}} In the late 1800s, Albert I, Prince of Monaco determined that the Gulf Stream branched into the North Atlantic Drift and the Azores Current.{{sfn |Moody |2010 |loc=II. Adrift at Sea }} In the 1890s, Scottish scientist T. Wemyss Fulton released floating bottles and wooden slips to chart North Sea surface currents for the first time.{{cite web|title=Message in a bottle |url=http://www.gov.scot/News/Releases/2012/08/messagebottle30082012 |publisher=Scottish Government |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170405071448/http://www.gov.scot/News/Releases/2012/08/messagebottle30082012 |archive-date=April 5, 2017 |location=News Releases |date=August 30, 2012 |url-status=live }} Releasing bottles designed to remain a short distance above the sea bed, British marine biologist George Parker Bidder III first proved in the early twentieth century that deep sea currents flowed from east to west in the North Sea and that bottom feeders prefer to move against the current.{{cite news |last1=Boxall |first1=Simon |title=Why ocean scientists hope someone gets your message in a bottle |url=http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/why-ocean-scientists-hope-someone-gets-your-message-in-a-bottle?http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/why-ocean-scientists-hope-someone-gets-your-message-in-a-bottle |publisher=The National Post (reprinting from The Conversation) |date=April 25, 2016 |archive-url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20160507180637/http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/why-ocean-scientists-hope-someone-gets-your-message-in-a-bottle |archive-date=May 7, 2016 |url-status=live |access-date=April 1, 2020 }}

The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (USC&GS) used drift bottles from 1846 to 1966.{{cite web |last1=Dawicki |first1=Shelley |title=Drift Bottle Found on Martha's Vineyard Has Quite a Story to Tell |url=http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/news/features/mv_bottle/ |publisher=NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150210235757/http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/news/features/mv_bottle |archive-date=February 10, 2015 |date=March 14, 2014 |url-status=live }} More recently, technologies involving satellite tags, fixed current profilers and satellite communication have permitted more efficient analysis of ocean currents: at any given time, thousands of modern "drifters" transmit current position, temperature, velocity, etc., to satellites, thus avoiding conventional drift bottles' dependence on serendipitous finds and cooperation by conscientious citizens.{{cite web |title=NWFSC's Own Message in a Bottle: Ocean Drifters and Tiny Tags Have Been Telling Stories for Decades |url=https://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/news/features/bottle/bottle.cfm |publisher=NOAA's NWFSC |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160724220756/https://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/news/features/bottle/bottle.cfm |archive-date=July 24, 2016 |date=2013 |url-status=live }}

Drift bottle studies have provided a simple way to learn about non-tidal movement of waters containing eggs and larvae of commercially important fishes, for sharing among fisheries scientists and oceanographers.{{cite web |last1=Dawicki |first1=Shelley |title=Message in a Bottle: The Story Behind the Story -- Drift Bottles Helped Determine Distribution of Fish Eggs and Larvae |url=http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/news/features/drift_bottles/ |publisher=NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160725003703/http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/news/features/drift_bottles/ |archive-date=July 25, 2016 |date=March 14, 2014 |url-status=live }} Such experiments simulate the travel of pollutants such as oil spills, study formation of ocean gyre garbage patches such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and suggest travel paths of invasive species. Persistent currents are detected to allow ships to ride favorable currents and avoid opposing currents. Projected travel paths of navigation hazards, such as naval mines, advise safer shipping routes.{{cite web |last1=Lederer |first1=Muriel |title=Letters from the Sea |url=http://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/UF/00/09/73/66/00002/UF00097366_00002.pdf |publisher=The Panama Canal Review |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160904202128/http://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/UF/00/09/73/66/00002/UF00097366_00002.pdf |archive-date=September 4, 2016 |location=University of Florida Digital Collections |date=Fall 1971 |url-status=live}} Even in inland waterways, drifters wirelessly deliver real-time data on water quality, GPS location, and water velocity, for early warning against flash floods, measuring pollution run-off, and monitoring algal blooms.{{cite news |last1=Kennedy |first1=Matt |title=QUT deploys high-tech "message in a bottle" to fight floods and pollution in river systems |url=https://newatlas.com/qut-flood-pollution-detector/55572/ |work=New Atlas |date=July 23, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180724120414/https://newatlas.com/qut-flood-pollution-detector/55572/ |archive-date=July 24, 2018 |url-status=live }}

Outside science, people have launched bottled messages to find pen pals,{{sfn |Ebbesmeyer |Scigliano |2009 |pp=57-58 }} "bottle preachers"{{sfn |Kraske |1977 |pp=50–52 }} have sent "sermon bottles",{{sfn |Ebbesmeyer |Scigliano |2009 |pp=62-67 }} propaganda-bearing bottles have been directed at foreign shores,{{sfn |Ebbesmeyer |Scigliano |2009 |pp=57-58 }}{{cite news |last1=Fifield |first1=Ann |title=With food and facts carried in bottles, activists try to penetrate isolated North Korea |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/with-food-and-facts-carried-in-bottles-activists-try-to-penetrate-isolated-north-korea/2018/04/23/abbe2582-438e-11e8-baaf-8b3c5a3da888_story.html |newspaper=The Washington Post |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180424124805/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/with-food-and-facts-carried-in-bottles-activists-try-to-penetrate-isolated-north-korea/2018/04/23/abbe2582-438e-11e8-baaf-8b3c5a3da888_story.html |archive-date=April 24, 2018 |date=April 24, 2018 |url-status=live}} and survivors have sent poetic loving tributes to departed loved ones{{cite news |last1=Wright |first1=Shayne |title=Hobe Sound woman finds mysterious message in bottle on beach |url=https://www.wpbf.com/article/hobe-sound-woman-finds-mysterious-message-in-bottle-on-beach/26889773 |publisher=WPFB 25 |location=West Palm Beach, Florida |date=March 21, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190322134514/https://www.wpbf.com/article/hobe-sound-woman-finds-mysterious-message-in-bottle-on-beach/26889773 |archive-date=March 22, 2019 |url-status=live}} or sent their cremated remains (ashes) on a final journey.{{cite web |title=Woman Finds Ashes and Message in a Bottle, 4 Years After It Was Sent Out to Sea |url=http://www.insideedition.com/woman-finds-ashes-and-message-bottle-4-years-after-it-was-sent-out-sea-37911 |work=Inside Edition |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171108213846/http://www.insideedition.com/woman-finds-ashes-and-message-bottle-4-years-after-it-was-sent-out-sea-37911 |archive-date=November 8, 2017 |date=November 8, 2017 |url-status=live }}{{cite news |title=Cremated remains of Tenn. woman found inside 'message in a bottle' |url=https://www.wkrn.com/news/cremated-remains-of-tenn-woman-found-inside-message-in-a-bottle-/2023886949 |publisher=WKRN |date=May 24, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190610125751/https://www.wkrn.com/news/cremated-remains-of-tenn-woman-found-inside-message-in-a-bottle-/2023886949 |archive-date=June 10, 2019 |location=Nashville, Tennessee |url-status=live }}

It was estimated in 2009 that since the mid-1900s, six million bottled messages had been released, including 500,000 from oceanographers.{{sfn |Ebbesmeyer |Scigliano |2009 |p=67 }}

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| image1=189804 Drift Cask CROPPED George Melville.jpg | width1= | caption1=Floating wood-and-metal "drift casks" launched from northern Alaska in 1899-1901 reached Siberia, Iceland and Norway, becoming the first human-made objects to transit the Northwest Passage.{{sfn |Ebbesmeyer |Scigliano |2009 |pp=56-57 |ps=, describing drift casks designed by George W. Melville.}}

| image2 = 1960sSeabedDrifterWithStem.png | width2= | caption2 =This 1960s-era seabed drifter includes a descending ballast stem to allow a more buoyant disk to remain just above the seabed to be carried by bottom currents. An imprinted message offers a small reward for reporting the time and place the drifter was found.

}}

Some bottles are ballasted with dry sand so that they float vertically at or near the ocean surface, and are less influenced by winds and breaking waves than other bottles that are purposely not ballasted. Wooden blocks float higher in the water and thus are more influenced by wind—a design specially suited for simulating travel paths of plastic waste that is less dense than glass containers.{{cite news |last1=Melanie |first1=Hall |title=Tackling plastic waste in oceans with 'wooden message in a bottle' |url=http://www.dw.com/en/tackling-plastic-waste-in-oceans-with-wooden-message-in-a-bottle/a-36031567 |publisher=Deutsche Welle |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161018043919/http://www.dw.com/en/tackling-plastic-waste-in-oceans-with-wooden-message-in-a-bottle/a-36031567 |archive-date=October 18, 2016 |date=October 13, 2016 |url-status=live }} A research program from the University of Oldenburg (Germany) involves 100,000 wooden blocks of various thicknesses.

An early-20th-century "bottom" (or seabed) drift bottle design by George Parker Bidder III involved weighting a bottle with a long copper wire that causes it to sink until the wire trails upon the sea bottom, at which time the bottle tends to remain a few inches above the bottom to be moved by the bottom current. A mushroom-shaped seabed drifter design has also been used. Seabed drifters are designed to be scooped up by a trawler or wash up on shore.

Water pressure pressing on the cork or other closure was thought to keep a bottle better sealed; some designs included a wooden stick to stop the cork from imploding. Vessels of less scientific designs have survived for extended periods, including a baby food bottle{{cite news |last1=Peterson |first1=Eric |title='Message in a bottle' found in bay apparently dates to Vietnam War era |url=http://fox11online.com/news/local/lakeshore/message-found-in-bottle-dates-back-to-vietnam-war |publisher=Fox 11 News (Green Bay, WI, U.S.) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160528154639/http://fox11online.com/news/local/lakeshore/message-found-in-bottle-dates-back-to-vietnam-war |archive-date=May 28, 2016 |date=May 27, 2016 |url-status=live }} • {{cite news |last1=Peterson |first1=Eric |title=Message in bottle mystery may be getting clearer |url=http://fox11online.com/news/local/lakeshore/message-in-bottle-mystery-may-be-getting-clearer |publisher=Fox 11 News (Green Bay, WI, U.S.) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160602105100/http://fox11online.com/news/local/lakeshore/message-in-bottle-mystery-may-be-getting-clearer |archive-date=June 2, 2016 |date=June 1, 2016 |url-status=live }} a ginger beer bottle, and a 7-Up bottle.

A low percentage of bottles—thought by some to be less than 3 percent—are actually recovered, so they are released in large numbers, sometimes in the thousands. Reported recovery rates for large-scale scientific studies vary based on the ocean of release, and range from 11 percent (Woods Hole, 156,276 bottles from 1948 to 1962, Atlantic), to 10 percent (Woods Hole, 165,566 bottles from 1960 to 1970, Atlantic), to 3.4 percent (Scripps Institution, 148,384 bottles from 1954 to 1971, Pacific).{{sfn |Kraske |1977 |pp=88–89 }} Oceanographic drift card recovery rates have ranged from 50 percent if released in densely populated areas (North Sea, Puget Sound) to 1 percent in uninhabited areas (Antarctica).{{sfn |Ebbesmeyer |Scigliano |2009 |p=67 }} Recovery rates decrease as bottles are released further from shore, with oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer developing a rule of thumb that bottles released more than 100 miles from shore have recovery rates below 10 percent, and "only a few percent" of those released more than 1,000 miles from shore are recovered.{{cite web|last1=Heidorn |first1=Keith C. |title=Of Shoes And Ships And Rubber Ducks And A Message In A Bottle |url=http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/elements/shoes.htm |website=IslandNet.com |location="The Weather Doctor" section |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160513190816/http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/elements/shoes.htm |archive-date=May 13, 2016 |date=March 17, 1999 |url-status=live }} Article updated October 2010. About 90 percent of marine debris washes up on less than 10 percent of the world's coastlines, favoring beaches perpendicular to the dominant ocean current. Objects with similar buoyancy characteristics tend to collect together.{{cite news |last1=Wollan |first1=Malia |title=How to Find a Message in a Bottle |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/how-to-find-a-message-in-a-bottle.html |work=The New York Times |date=March 27, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150329043445/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/how-to-find-a-message-in-a-bottle.html |archive-date=March 29, 2015 |url-status=live }}

A Scripps scientist said that marine organisms grow on the bottles, causing them to sink within eight to ten months unless washed ashore earlier.{{sfn |Kraske |1977 |p=89 }} An unknown number are found but not reported.{{sfn |Kraske |1977 |p=89 }}

Some drift bottles were not found for more than a century after being launched.

{{Quote box

|title =

|quote = {{font|font=Times New Roman |size=14pt |{{nbsp|5}}Drift bottles and seabed drifters
provide only a birth notice and an obituary –
with no biography.}}

|source = 1973, Dean F. Bumpus, Senior Scientist
Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst.● {{cite journal |last1=Bumpus |first1=Dean F. |title=A description of the circulation on the continental shelf of the east coast of the United States |journal=Progress in Oceanography |date=1973 |volume=6 |page=150 |doi=10.1016/0079-6611(73)90006-2 |bibcode=1973PrOce...6..111B }} ● Quotation is freely accessible online from full-text secondary source: {{cite journal|last1=Fischer|first1=Hugo B.|title=Mixing processes on the Atlantic continental shelf, Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras|journal=Limnol. Oceanogr.|date=January 1980|volume=25|issue=1|page=115|doi=10.4319/lo.1980.25.1.0114|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.4319/lo.1980.25.1.0114/asset/lno19802510114.pdf?v=1&t=ist2ig0s&s=dae6d5e91e0eb3999643bad2f30c33c16ad6499c|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160907154618/http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.4319/lo.1980.25.1.0114/asset/lno19802510114.pdf?v=1&t=ist2ig0s&s=dae6d5e91e0eb3999643bad2f30c33c16ad6499c |archive-date= September 7, 2016 |url-status=live |bibcode=1980LimOc..25..114F|citeseerx=10.1.1.509.1774}}

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Floating objects may ride gyres (large circulating current systems) that are present in each ocean, and may be transferred from one ocean's gyre to another's. Further, objects may be sidetracked by wind, storms, countercurrents, and ocean current variation.{{cite web|last1=Krajick |first1=Kevin |title=Message in a Bottle |url=http://courses.washington.edu/ocean200/Readings/Ebbesmeyer.pdf |publisher=University of Washington |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160918214856/http://courses.washington.edu/ocean200/Readings/Ebbesmeyer.pdf |archive-date=September 18, 2016 |date=2001 |url-status=live}} From Smithsonian, July 2001, pp. 36-42. Accordingly, drift bottles have traveled large distances, with drifts of 4,000 to 6,000 miles and more—sometimes traveling 100 miles per day—not uncommon. Bottles have traveled from the Beaufort Sea above northern Alaska and northwestern Canada to northern Europe; from Antarctica to Tasmania; from Mexico to the Philippines; from Canada's Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay to Irish, French, Scottish, and Norwegian beaches; from the Galapagos Islands to Australia;{{cite news |last1=White |first1=Jorgia |title=Queensland police officer finds message in a bottle |url=http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queensland-police-officer-finds-message-in-a-bottle-20160227-gn5g63.html |work=Brisbane Times |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160322183330/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queensland-police-officer-finds-message-in-a-bottle-20160227-gn5g63.html |archive-date=March 22, 2016 |date=February 27, 2016 |url-status=live }} and from New Zealand to Spain (practically antipodes).{{cite news |last1=Carter |first1=Charlotte |title=Message in the bottle from Whangarei to Spain may be a record breaker |url=http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12012437 |work=New Zealand Herald |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180314121812/http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12012437 |archive-date=March 14, 2018 |date=March 14, 2018 |url-status=live }} Based on empirical data collected since 1901, a computer program called OSCURS (Ocean Surface Current Simulator) digitally simulates motion and timing of floating objects in and between ocean gyres.{{cite web|last1=Ingraham Jr. |first1=W. James |title=Getting to Know OSCURS, REFM's Ocean Surface Current Simulator |url=http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/REFM/docs/oscurs/get_to_know.htm |publisher=Alaska Fisheries Science Center (NOAA) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161128233913/http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/REFM/docs/oscurs/get_to_know.htm |archive-date=November 28, 2016 |url-status=live }} Originally published in the Alaska Fisheries Science Center Quarterly Report, April–May–June, 1997. Program limited North Pacific from 10° N latitude to the Bering Strait.

Despite being launched substantial time periods before being found, some bottles have been found physically close to their original launch points, such as a message launched by two girls in 1915 and found in 2012 near Harsens Island, Michigan, U.S., and a ten-year-old girl's message launched into the Indian River Bay in Delaware, U.S. in 1971 and found in adjacent Delaware Seashore State Park in 2016.

Historical examples are listed in chronological order, based on year of recovery (when applicable):

File:18920904 Corsewall Lighthouse - message in a bottle.jpg

File:St Kilda mailboat.jpg mailboat" from the isolated island about {{convert|110|mi|km}} northwest of the Scottish mainland, ca. 1898. Usually formed of sheepskin bladders providing flotation for boat-shaped enclosures for letters, the "mailboats" reached Scotland with some degree of reliability, and also to Scandinavia.{{cite web |title=At the edge of the world (St Kilda Mailboat) |url=https://kildaprojet.com/2016/03/04/at-the-edge-of-the-world-st-kilda-mailboat/ |website=KildaProjet.com |publisher=Le Project Kilda (The Kilda Project) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230610214028/https://kildaprojet.com/2016/03/04/at-the-edge-of-the-world-st-kilda-mailboat/ |archive-date=10 June 2023 |date=4 March 2016 |url-status=live}}]]

• It is reputed{{sfn |Ebbesmeyer |Scigliano |2009 |p=229 }} that about 310 BC, Aristotle's protégé Greek philosopher Theophrastus used bottled messages to determine if the Mediterranean Sea was formed by the inflowing Atlantic Ocean.
• When Christopher Columbus encountered a severe storm while returning from America, he is said to have written on parchment what he had found in the New World and requested it be forwarded to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, enclosed the parchment in a waxed cloth and placed it into a large wooden barrel to be cast into the sea. The communication was never found.{{cite book |last1=Bergreen |first1=Laurence |title=Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 |date=September 25, 2012 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0143122104 |edition=Reprint |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3Dyhtkk4VQcC&q=columbus+%22message+in+a+bottle%22+isabella+-ohio&pg=PT117 }} "Part One: Discovery" (exact page does not show in Google Books preview).
• On April 15, 1841, the Wellington, W.C. Kendrick, Commander, bound "from Madras and Cape bound to London", launched a bottled message in the mid-Atlantic (at 13° N) "for the purpose of throwing some light on the ocean currents".The Times-Picayune. October 26, 1841. Page 2. No author listed. Republished information that appears to have originated in Guayama, Puerto Rico. Quote: "Ship Wellington of London, W.C. Kendrick, Commander, From Madras and Cape bound to London. Lat. 13 degrees 58' North, Long. 35 degrees 30' West. This bottle is dispatched for the purpose of throwing some light on the ocean currents, and it is earnestly requested that the time and place of finding it may be publicly made known. At Sea, April 15th, 1841."
• In 1847, from the brig Eagle laden with corn for the starving Irish in Waterford, Ireland, master Gregg dropped a bottled message with his location (42.40N, 54.10W) on March 27, requesting the find be sent to the Nautical Magazine (London) for publication to provide information on Atlantic currents. The bottle was retrieved on July 20 by Capt. Robert Oke on the revenue cutter Caledonia{{cite book |last=Tocque |first=Philip |date=1878 |title= Newfoundland: As it was and as it is in 1877 |url= http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/ref/collection/cns/id/127344 |location= Toronto, Ont. |publisher= J.B. Magurn }} off the coast of Newfoundland (46.36N, 55.30W).{{cite news |author= |date=14 Aug 1847 |title=Memoranda |url=http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/compoundobject/collection/morncourier/id/930/rec/1 |work= Morning Courier |location=St. John's, Newfoundland |page=3 |access-date= 7 March 2017}} |via=Memorial University of Newfoundland Digital Archives Initiative
• In 1856, a bottle was found on the Hebrides coast, Scotland, containing a note stating a ship, believed to be the SS Pacific, had sunk after a collision with an iceberg.{{cite web | last=Coogan | first=Jim | title=A Message From the Sea | website=barnstablepatriot.com | date=2014 | url=http://www.barnstablepatriot.com/home2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15011 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141024184337/http://www.barnstablepatriot.com/home2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15011 | archive-date=24 October 2014 | url-status=dead}}{{cite news |title=Reminisecence of the Lost Steamship Pacific.; Interesting Statement. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1861/08/07/archives/reminisecence-of-the-lost-steamship-pacific-interesting-statement.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=7 August 1861 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231101053152/https://www.nytimes.com/1861/08/07/archives/reminisecence-of-the-lost-steamship-pacific-interesting-statement.html |archive-date=1 November 2023 |quote=From the London Shipping Gazette |url-status=live }}
• In February 1862, the Bashford Hall "sent afloat a message in a bottle describing her perilous state." However, she arrived safely at Falmouth, England on March 6, 1862.Belfast News-Letter. May 12, 1862. Page 5. Belfast, North Ireland.
• After the January 11, 1866 sinking of the SS London in the Bay of Biscay, bottled messages—reported as "farewell messages from passengers... to friends and relatives in England"—were reportedly found in months following.The Hamilton Spectator. Page 3. May 12, 1866. No author listed. Quotes: "The Argus contains an account of certain bottles found on the French coast of the terrible Bay of Biscay." A retelling of this account reveals that the bottles contained "farewell messages from passengers by the London to friends and relatives in England." According to one D.W. Lemmon, presumed drowned: "The ship is sinking," he wrote, "no hope of being saved." Mr. H.F.D. Denis wrote "Adieu, father, brothers and sisters, and my dear Edith. Steamer London, Bay of Biscay. Ship too heavily laden for its size, and too crank. Windows stove in. Water coming in everywhere. God bless my poor orphans. Storm not too violent for a ship in good condition."
• In 1875, ship's steward Van Hoydek and cabin boy Henry Trusillo of the British sailing ship Lennie released 24 bottled messages into the Bay of Biscay, telling of the murder by mutineers of their captain and officers. French authorities soon received the message, rescued Hoydek and Trusillo, and brought the mutineers to justice.{{cite news |title=Mutiny and Murder on the High Seas |url=http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/97420881 |work=The Western Star |location=National Library of Australia (NLA) Trove digitized newspapers |date=May 13, 1876 }}{{sfn |Kraske |1977 |pp=57–59 }}
• In 1876, on the remote Scottish island of St Kilda, freelance journalist John Sands and marooned Austrian sailors deployed two messages requesting the Austrian Consul rescue them with provisions. The messages, each enclosed in a cocoa tin attached to a sheep's bladder for flotation in an arrangement later called a "St. Kilda mail boat",{{cite news |title=St Kilda Mail Boat reaches Norway |url=http://www.stornowaygazette.co.uk/what-s-on/leisure-time/st-kilda-mail-boat-reaches-norway-1-3930408 |work=Stornoway Gazette |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151029103524/http://www.stornowaygazette.co.uk/what-s-on/leisure-time/st-kilda-mail-boat-reaches-norway-1-3930408 |archive-date=October 29, 2015 |date=October 28, 2015 |url-status=live }} were discovered in Orkney within nine days and in Ross-Shire after 22 days. Since that time, sending "St. Kilda mail" has become a recreational ritual for island visitors, the containers often riding the Gulf Stream to the British mainland, Shetland, Orkney and Scandinavia.{{cite news |last1=Murray |first1=Keegan |title=Sandwick bairns find 'St Kilda Mailboat' |url=http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2016/03/27/sandwick-bairns-find-st-kilda-mailboat |work=The Shetland Times |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160416095930/http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2016/03/27/sandwick-bairns-find-st-kilda-mailboat |archive-date=April 16, 2016 |date=March 27, 2016 |url-status=live }}

• Message-bearing bottles from Titanic (1912) and Lusitania (1915) have been widely recounted as fact, but even before these bottles were found The Irish News stated in April 1912 that "very many" such stories turn out to be "cruel hoaxes".{{cite news |last1=Moloney |first1=Senan |title=Faces of the Titanic: Jeremiah Burke sent a message in a bottle before his death |url=http://www.irishcentral.com/news/faces-of-the-titanic-jeremiah-burke-lost-his-life-at-19-put-a-message-in-a-bottle-before-he-died-146337625-237439851.html |work=IrishCentral.com |date=April 2, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160415182346/http://www.irishcentral.com/news/faces-of-the-titanic-jeremiah-burke-lost-his-life-at-19-put-a-message-in-a-bottle-before-he-died-146337625-237439851.html |archive-date=April 15, 2016 |url-status=live}} Moloney quotes passages from other newspapers, including The Irish News.
• In February 1916, when German Zeppelin L 19 experienced unfavorable weather, battle damage and multiple engine failure after attacking the British Midlands, its commander's last message to superiors and the crew's final letters to relatives were released into the North Sea to be found on a Swedish coast six months later.{{cite web |url=http://www.zeppelin-museum.dk/D/german/historie/l-19/l-19.html |title=Das Tragödie von L19 (The tragedy of L19) |publisher=Zeppelin-Museums Tondern (Denmark) |language=de |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020702171704/http://www.zeppelin-museum.dk/D/german/historie/l-19/l-19.html |archive-date=July 2, 2002 |url-status=dead |access-date=June 10, 2010 }}{{cite news |title=Last Messages from "L 19" |url=http://flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1916/1916%20-%200709.html |work=Flightglobal |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141104104317/http://flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1916/1916%20-%200709.html |archive-date=November 4, 2014 |page=707 |date=August 17, 1916 |url-status=live}} The written descriptions of how a British fishing trawler had refused to rescue the downed Zeppelin's crew—the trawler captain claiming he feared the German airmen would overpower his own unarmed crew—contributed to an enduring international controversy.See {{cite news |title=Inside Out investigates why air raid on Midlands led to British fisherman being accused of war crimes |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/02_february/15/io_airraids.shtml |publisher=BBC |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050306230522/http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/02_february/15/io_airraids.shtml |archive-date=March 6, 2005 |date=February 15, 2005 |url-status=live }}
• On December 23, 1927, Frances Wilson Grayson, niece of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, was to attempt to be the first woman to make a transatlantic flight (non-solo). However, her Sikorsky amphibian plane disappeared en route from New York's Long Island to Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, and was never found. A bottled message was found in Salem Harbor, Massachusetts, in January 1929, the unauthenticated message reading, "1928, we are freezing. Gas leaked out. We are drifting off Grand Banks. Grayson."{{cite news |last1=Chase |first1=Sean |title=Vanished at sea -the doomed obsession of Frances Wilson Grayson |url=http://www.thedailyobserver.ca/2010/12/09/vanished-at-sea-the-doomed-obsession-of-frances-wilson-grayson |work=The Daily Observer |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170424174024/http://www.thedailyobserver.ca/2010/12/09/vanished-at-sea-the-doomed-obsession-of-frances-wilson-grayson |archive-date=April 24, 2017 |date=December 9, 2010 |url-status=live }}
• In December 1928, a trapper working at the mouth of the Agawa River, Ontario, found a bottled note from Alice Bettridge, an assistant stewardess in her early twenties who initially survived the December 1927 sinking in a blizzard of the freighter Kamloops and, before she herself perished, wrote "I am the last one left alive, freezing and starving to death on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. I just want mom and dad to know my fate."{{cite news |title=A shipwreck, a young woman and a message in a bottle |url=https://www.sootoday.com/columns/remember-this/a-shipwreck-a-young-woman-and-a-message-in-a-bottle-1473946 |work=SooToday.com |date=May 26, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190612185556/https://www.sootoday.com/columns/remember-this/a-shipwreck-a-young-woman-and-a-message-in-a-bottle-1473946 |archive-date=June 12, 2019 |quote=From the archives of the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library. |url-status=live }} Handwriting confirmed by parents.
• In 1929, a bottle that came to be known as the Flying Dutchman was released by a German marine science expedition with instructions for any finders to report the find but return the bottle to the sea.{{sfn |Moody |2010 |loc=II. Adrift at Sea }} Found at several locations in succession, the Flying Dutchman traveled 16,000 miles from its release point in the southern Indian Ocean, to Cape Horn in South America, and back through the Indian Ocean to its last reported find in 1935 on the west coast of Australia.{{sfn |Moody |2010 |loc=II. Adrift at Sea }}
• On the night of March 28, 1941 in the last moments of the Battle of Cape Matapan, aboard the sinking cruiser Fiume, Italian sailor Francesco Chirico wrote a farewell message and threw it overboard in a bottle. Chirico's message, including a note, "Please give news to my dear mother that I die for the homeland...", was found in 1952 near Villasimius, Sardinia.{{cite news |last1=Sansone |first1=Vito |title=Il messaggio in bottiglia del marinai |trans-title=The sailor's message in the bottle |url=https://www.lacittadisalerno.it/cultura-e-spettacoli/il-messaggio-in-bottiglia-del-marinaio-1.2036523 |work=La Città di Salerno |date=October 2, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200312172618/https://www.lacittadisalerno.it/cultura-e-spettacoli/il-messaggio-in-bottiglia-del-marinaio-1.2036523 |archive-date=March 12, 2020 |language=it |url-status=live }}
• On January 7, 1943, a Schweppes lemonade bottle was found near Woolnorth in northwestern Tasmania, containing a penciled message thrown overboard on April 17, 1916, by Australian soldier John Oppy as his troop ship passed between Encounter Bay and Kangaroo Island, South Australia. Oppy himself survived to see the message returned.{{cite news |title=After Twentyseven Years in Ocean / Bottle Found With Soldier's Note in It / Now Back in Hands of the Writer, Jack Oppy, of Condobolin. |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/214439959 |work=Lachlander and Condobolin and Western Districts Recorder |date=February 1, 1943 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190924195231/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/214439959 |archive-date=September 24, 2019 |location=Condobolin, NSW, Australia |url-status=live }}

{{Quote box

|title =

|quote = {{font|font=Times New Roman |size=14pt |{{nbsp|5}}The notion of the message in a bottle has come to attain a kind of romanticism, built perhaps on the allure of the exotic mystery its contents might reveal from a faraway place or a long-ago time.}}

|source = Paul Brown, Messages From the Sea{{sfn|Brown|2016|p=10}}

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• On Christmas Day 1945, 21-year-old medical corpsman Frank Hayostek threw a message-laden aspirin bottle from his Liberty ship as it approached New York, the bottle being found eight months later near Dingle, County Kerry, by Irish milkmaid Breda O'Sullivan. Her mailed reply began a correspondence that inspired Hayostek to save money for airfare to visit O'Sullivan in 1952. Intense media attention for the "impossibly romantic story", including Time magazine stories, overshadowed their two-week visit, the two parting but corresponding until they married other people in 1958 and 1959. Media attention endured through the sixtieth anniversary of their meeting,See {{cite news |title=Message in a Bottle |url=https://www.rte.ie/radio/doconone/647286-documentary-podcast-message-in-a-bottle-frank-hayostek-breda-osullivan |publisher=RTÉ Radio One |work=Documentary on One |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211227215821/https://www.rte.ie/radio/doconone/647286-documentary-podcast-message-in-a-bottle-frank-hayostek-breda-osullivan |archive-date=December 27, 2021 |date=August 4, 2012 |url-status=live }} Site includes downloadable mp3 podcast. 2–3 years after their deaths.{{cite news |title=Message in a Bottle |url=https://www.rte.ie/radio/doconone/2012/1228/647286-documentary-podcast-message-in-a-bottle-frank-hayostek-breda-osullivan/ |work=RTE |date=March 25, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211227215607/https://www.rte.ie/radio/doconone/2012/1228/647286-documentary-podcast-message-in-a-bottle-frank-hayostek-breda-osullivan/ |archive-date=December 27, 2021 |url-status=live }}{{cite news|last1=Quinlan |first1=Ailin |title=The GI and the Irish colleen |url=http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/the-gi-and-the-irish-colleen-26883730.html |work=Irish Independent |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160816132128/http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/the-gi-and-the-irish-colleen-26883730.html |archive-date=August 16, 2016 |date=August 5, 2012 |url-status=live }}
• In 1955, a bottle from a 1903 German Antarctic expedition was found in New Zealand, about 3400 miles from its launch point between the Kerguelen Islands and Tasmania; however, hydrographers surmise it had drifted around the world many times.{{cite news |title=Bottles washed up on beaches with various corked messages |url=https://www.myheritage.com/research/collection-10450/australian-newspapers?itemId=9216673&action=showRecord |work=The Canberra Times |date=August 7, 1991 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160906142008/https://www.myheritage.com/research/collection-10450/australian-newspapers?itemId=9216673&action=showRecord |archive-date=September 6, 2016 |location=National Library of Australia (NLA) |via=MyHeritage.com |page=23 |url-status=live }}
• In 1956, Swedish sailor Åke Viking{{efn|Some sources give the sailor's surname as Wiking, the variant preferred before the 1889 Swedish spelling reform.}} sent a bottled message "To Someone Beautiful and Far Away" that reached a 17-year-old Sicilian girl named Paolina, sparking a correspondence that culminated in their marriage in 1958.{{cite web |last1=Breyer |first1=Melissa |title=Message in a bottle: 8 striking stories of letters sent to sea |url=http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/message-in-a-bottle-8-striking-stories-of-letters-sent-to-sea |publisher=Mother Nature Network |date=August 11, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130816004008/http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/message-in-a-bottle-8-striking-stories-of-letters-sent-to-sea |archive-date=August 16, 2013 |url-status=live }} • Confirmed accurate, with a 1959 quotation from The American Weekly, at [http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/man_meets_wife_via_message_in_a_bottle "Man Meets Wife Via Message-in-a-Bottle"], hoaxes.org, August 18, 2007 ([https://web.archive.org/web/20151209162643*/http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/man_meets_wife_via_message_in_a_bottle archive]). The affair attracted so much attention that 4,000 people celebrated their wedding.{{cite web |last1=Randazzo |first1=Antonio |title=Sposi in bottiglia Siracusa (Spouse in a Bottle -- Syracuse) |url=http://www.antoniorandazzo.it/ricordando/sposi-in-bottiglia-siracusa.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160815215240/http://www.antoniorandazzo.it/ricordando/sposi-in-bottiglia-siracusa.html |archive-date=August 15, 2016 |date=2008 |url-status=live }} Images also [https://web.archive.org/web/20160815215641/http://anteassrcenacolopoetico.blogspot.com/2008/03/matrimonio-in-bottiglia.html here].{{cite news|title = Sea brings girl lover, not dowry| page= 9C| newspaper = The Charlotte Observer | first = Tullia | last = Zevi | date = August 14, 1958 |url = https://www.newspapers.com/image/619979691}}
• In 1959 Guinness Brewery launched 150,000 bottles into the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea in a promotional campaign. It was reported that Inuit hunters on Coats Island, in Canada's Hudson Bay, found 80 of the bottles.
• In 1969, a Canadian scientific expedition dropped a message bottle through a hole in the drift ice at the approximate North Pole. The bottle was found in 1972 in northeast Iceland.{{cite magazine |first=Fred |last=Roots |title=Why the North Pole matters: An important history of challenges and global fascination |date=14 March 2017 |magazine=Canadian Geographic |url=https://canadiangeographic.ca/articles/why-the-north-pole-matters-an-important-history-of-challenges-and-global-fascination/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230606164310/https://canadiangeographic.ca/articles/why-the-north-pole-matters-an-important-history-of-challenges-and-global-fascination/ |archive-date=6 June 2023 |url-status=live }}
• In May 1976, National Geographic World magazine released 1,000 bottles—250 per week—from the cruise ship Song of Norway, with instructions in five languages to fill out and return cards, in order to help map ocean currents.{{cite news |title=Fishing for Bottles |url=https://newspaperarchive.com/wilson-daily-times-jul-26-1976-p-3/ |work=Wilson Daily Times |agency=Associated Press |date=July 26, 1976 |page=3 }}
• In 1978, a Russian researcher discovered a bottled message in the Franz Josef Land, north of mainland Russia, that was deposited by Karl Weyprecht, leader of the 1872–1874 Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition which sought a Northeast Passage.{{cite web |title=Polarforschung Gestern / Historischer Teil über Carl Weyprecht und die Expedition von 1872-1874 (Polar research yesterday Historical part about Carl Weyprecht and the expedition from 1872-1874) |url=http://www.carl-weyprecht.org/ausstellung.html |website=Carl-Weyprecht.org |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150811231525/http://www.carl-weyprecht.org/ausstellung.html |archive-date=August 11, 2015 |language=German |date=2013 |url-status=dead }} (publication date estimated based on earliest Archive.org archive)
• A message that an American couple released from a cruise ship approaching Hawaii in 1979 was found off Songkhla Beach, Thailand by a former South Vietnamese soldier and his family as they fled that country's communist regime by boat. A correspondence relationship began in 1983, and the couple worked with U.S. Immigration to help the Vietnamese family obtain refugee status in 1985 and move to the U.S.{{cite news |last1=Becklund |first1=Laurie |title=Bobbing Message at Sea Alters Viet Refugees' Lives : Note in Bottle--a Ticket to Freedom |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-04-26-mn-20828-story.html |work=Los Angeles Times |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120328055639/http://articles.latimes.com/1985-04-26/news/mn-20828_1_refugee-camp |archive-date=March 28, 2012 |date=April 26, 1985 |url-status=live}}
• In 1991, a bottled message found on Vancouver Island, Canada, urged the release of Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng. According to oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, the bottle was likely released in 1980 near Quemoy Island, one of many Taiwan propaganda bottles launched toward mainland China.{{Cite journal |last=Ebbesmeyer |first=Curtis |last2=Ingraham |first2=W. James |last3=McKinnon |first3=Richard |last4=Okubo |first4=Akira |last5=Wang |first5=Dong‐Ping |last6=Strickland |first6=Richard |last7=Willing |first7=Peter |date=1993-04-20 |title=Bottle appeal drifts across the Pacific |url=https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/93EO00165 |journal=Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union |language=en |volume=74 |issue=16 |pages=193–194 |doi=10.1029/93EO00165 |issn=0096-3941}}
• In what was described as "perhaps the most famous message in a bottle love story", in March 1999 a green ginger beer bottle was dredged up by a fisherman off the Essex coast, the bottle containing an 84-year-old letter tossed into the English Channel on September 9, 1914, by British soldier Private Thomas Hughes days before he was killed in fighting in France. Hughes' letter, written for delivery to his wife who had died in 1979, was delivered instead to his then 86-year-old daughter in New Zealand by the fisherman himself, who with his own wife was flown to New Zealand at the expense of New Zealand Post.{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/346879.stm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091030075740/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/346879.stm |archive-date=October 30, 2009 |date=May 18, 1999 |work=BBC News |title=Sweet message in a bottle |url-status=live }} • Some references ([https://web.archive.org/web/20160320165737/http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/879168/HUGHES%2C%20THOMAS example: Commonwealth War Graves Commission]) state that Hughes died twelve days later, not two days later as most popularly reported.

File:1906MarineBiolAssnPostcard.png

• A teardrop-shaped bottle was found in March 2002 on a beach in Kent, England, containing an unsigned letter from a French woman expressing her enduring grief over the death of her son at age 13. British author Karen Liebreich spent years of research, unsuccessfully trying to find the mother and eventually publishing a book called The Letter in the Bottle (2006). The book was published in French in 2009, sparking huge media coverage that alerted the mother for the first time that her letter had actually been discovered. Saying she initially felt violated by publication of her personal suffering, on condition of continued anonymity, she agreed to tell Liebreich the details of her son's 1981 death in a bicycle accident, her decades of suffering afterwards, and the story surrounding release of her letter from an English Channel ferry.{{cite news |last1=Daoust |first1=Phil |title=I found a message in a bottle |url=https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/14/karen-liebreich-letter-in-a-bottle |work=The Guardian|archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20160909181857/https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/14/karen-liebreich-letter-in-a-bottle |archive-date=September 9, 2016 |date=August 13, 2010 |url-status=live }}{{cite news |last1=Liebreich |first1=Karen |title=The mystery of the message in the bottle |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7836150/The-mystery-of-the-message-in-the-bottle.html |work=The Daily Telegraph|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100630085244/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7836150/The-mystery-of-the-message-in-the-bottle.html |archive-date=June 30, 2010 |date=June 27, 2010 |url-status=live }}
• In May 2005, three days after eighty-eight migrants were abandoned by human smugglers on a disabled boat, the migrants tied an SOS-bearing bottle to a long line of a passing fishing vessel, whose captain alerted authorities to rescue the migrants.• {{cite news|url=http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/05/31/message.in.bottle/ |title=Message in bottle saves drifting migrants |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050729082439/http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/05/31/message.in.bottle/ |archive-date=July 29, 2005 |date=May 31, 2005 |publisher=CNN |url-status=dead }} • {{cite news |last1=Jimenez |first1=Marianela |title=Message in bottle saves stranded migrants |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/01/1 |work=The Guardian |agency=Associated Press |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130829055738/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/01/1 |archive-date=August 29, 2013 |date=May 31, 2005 |url-status=live }}
• On December 10, 2006, a bottom drift bottle, released on April 25, 1914, northeast of the Shetland Islands by the Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen, U.K., was recovered by a Shetland fisherman, after the bottle had spent over 92 years at sea.{{cite web |title=Oldest message in a bottle |url=http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-1/oldest-message-in-a-bottle/ |work=Guinness World Records |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120202015451/http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-1/oldest-message-in-a-bottle/ |archive-date=February 2, 2012 |date=February 2, 2012 |url-status=dead }} Guinness web page was subsequently superseded; refer instead to archive link.
• In October 2011 in waters off Somalia, the crew of the pirated cargo ship Montecristo used a bottle with a flashing beacon to alert NATO ships that they had retreated to an armored room, permitting a military rescue operation to proceed with knowledge that the crew was not being held hostage.{{cite magazine |last1=Rawnsley |first1=Adam |title=Message in a Bottle: Old-School S.O.S. Helps Rescue Hijacked Ship |magazine=Wired |url=https://www.wired.com/2011/10/old-school-sos/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160817060212/https://www.wired.com/2011/10/old-school-sos/ |archive-date=August 17, 2016 |date=October 14, 2011 |url-status=live }}
• In April 2012 a fisherman recovered a bottom drift bottle that had been released 98 years earlier, on June 10, 1914,{{cite magazine |last1=Madrigal |first1=Alexis C. |title=Found: World's Oldest Message in a Bottle, Part of 1914 Citizen-Science Experiment |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/found-worlds-oldest-message-in-a-bottle-part-of-1914-citizen-science-experiment/261981/ |magazine=The Atlantic |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304101117/http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/found-worlds-oldest-message-in-a-bottle-part-of-1914-citizen-science-experiment/261981/ |archive-date=March 4, 2016 |date=September 5, 2012 |url-status=live }} one of 1,890 released by the Glasgow School of Navigation to test undercurrents in the seas around Scotland.{{cite news |last1=Pfeiffer |first1=Eric |title=98-year-old message in bottle sets world record |url=https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/sideshow/98-old-message-bottle-sets-world-record-005350603.html |work=Yahoo News |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160730203016/https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/sideshow/98-old-message-bottle-sets-world-record-005350603.html |archive-date=July 30, 2016 |date=August 30, 2012 |url-status=live }} The 2012 find occurred east of Shetland by the Copious, the same fishing vessel involved in the 2006 find.{{cite news |title=World record as message in bottle found after 98 years near Shetland |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-19422354 |publisher=BBC News|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151229064308/http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-19422354 |archive-date=December 29, 2015 |date=August 30, 2012 |url-status=live }}
• In a 2013 promotional campaign, Norwegian soft drink company Solo released a 26-foot, 2.7-ton replica soda bottle outfitted with a customized camera, navigation lights, an automatic identification system, a radar reflector, and GPS tracking technology, all powered by solar panels.{{cite web |last1=Fincher |first1=Jonathan |title=Norwegian soda company sets world's largest message in a bottle adrift |url=http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-largest-message-in-a-bottle/27137/ |work=Gizmag|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140827100654/http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-largest-message-in-a-bottle/27137/ |archive-date=August 27, 2014 |date=April 18, 2013 |url-status=live }} The craft drifted from Tenerife, Canary Islands, while broadcasting its location, but its electronics were stolen by pirates before its five-month trip terminated at Los Roques archipelago near Venezuela.{{cite web |title=Pirates empty big yellow bottle |url=http://www.canarianweekly.com/pirates-empty-big-yellow-bottle/ |publisher=Canarian Weekly |location=Canary Islands |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160730024207/http://www.canarianweekly.com/pirates-empty-big-yellow-bottle/ |archive-date=July 30, 2016 |date=September 6, 2013 |url-status=live }}
• In April 2013, a kite-surfer near the mouth of Croatia's Neretva River recovered a bottle containing a message purporting to have been sent in 1985 from Nova Scotia to fulfill a promise by a "Jonathon" to write to one "Mary".{{cite news |title=Message in a bottle washes up after 28 years |url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-18/message-in-a-bottle-washes-up-after-28-years/4636320 |publisher=Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC Online); Reuters |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140409072810/http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-18/message-in-a-bottle-washes-up-after-28-years/4636320 |archive-date=April 9, 2014 |date=April 18, 2013 |url-status=live }} The message received international media attention.{{cite web|last1=Šunjić |first1=Ante |title=Matea pronašla bocu s porukom o kojoj pišu svi svjetski mediji (Matea found a bottle with a message world media would write about) |url=http://dubrovacki.hr/clanak/50789/matea-medak-rezic-cistila-plazu-i-dozivjela-iznenadenje |publisher=Dubrovack Vjesnik |location=Croatia |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130420031001/http://dubrovacki.hr/clanak/50789/matea-medak-rezic-cistila-plazu-i-dozivjela-iznenadenje |archive-date=April 20, 2013 |date=April 17, 2013 |url-status=dead |language=hr }}
• In March 2014, a fisherman on the Baltic Sea near Kiel recovered a drift bottle containing a Danish postcard dated May 17, 1913, and signed by a then-20-year-old baker's son named Richard Platz, who asked for it to be delivered to his Berlin address. Researchers located Platz's granddaughter, by then 62, and delivered the 101-year-old message to her, Platz himself having died in 1946.{{cite news |title='World's oldest' message in a bottle arrives home |url=http://www.thelocal.de/20140408/granddaughter-gets-100-year-old-message-in-bottle-reaches-granddaughter |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150114032756/http://www.thelocal.de/20140408/granddaughter-gets-100-year-old-message-in-bottle-reaches-granddaughter |archive-date=January 14, 2015 |work=The Local|location=Germany |date=8 April 2014 |url-status=live }}

File:18860612 Paula message in bottle.jpg

• An April 2015 find on the North Sea island of Amrum, Germany, of a 108-year-old bottle sent by the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom in Plymouth, was one of 1,020 released into the North Sea between 1904 and 1906 by former association president George Parker Bidder III.{{cite news |last1=Huggler |first1=Justin |title=World's oldest message in a bottle washes up in Germany after 108 years at sea |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11815044/Worlds-oldest-message-in-a-bottle-washes-up-in-Germany-after-108-years-at-sea.html |work=The Telegraph |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160130091409/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11815044/Worlds-oldest-message-in-a-bottle-washes-up-in-Germany-after-108-years-at-sea.html |archive-date=January 30, 2016 |date=August 20, 2015 |url-status=live}}
• In 2016, Cuban migrants who had fled Cuba in a homemade boat, launched a bottled SOS message complaining of their treatment while being detained for 42 days aboard a United States Coast Guard Cutter.{{cite news |last1=Oppmann |first1=Patrick |title=Cubans who climbed lighthouse allege inhumane treatment in U.S. custody |url=http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/21/americas/cuba-lighthouse-migrants/ |publisher=CNN |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160722125921/http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/21/americas/cuba-lighthouse-migrants/ |archive-date=July 22, 2016 |date=July 21, 2016 |url-status=live }}
• In late 2016, a barnacle-encrusted, kelp-tangled GoPro video camera was recovered, the camera's memory card preserving footage showing the prelude to the camera's being swept overboard four years earlier, and also recording its first two hours underwater off Fingal Bay, Australia.{{cite news |last1=Connell |first1=Tim |title=GoPro lost at sea is reunited with its owner after four years |url=http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/gopro-lost-at-sea-is-reunited-with-its-owner-after-four-years-20161103-gsh2c6.html |work=Sydney Morning Herald|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161112052703/http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/gopro-lost-at-sea-is-reunited-with-its-owner-after-four-years-20161103-gsh2c6.html |archive-date=November 12, 2016 |date=November 3, 2016 |url-status=live}}
• In 2017, a small unmanned boat made by high school students and having solar panels, sensors and camera, drifted on an unexpected path from near Maine, to approach Spain and Portugal, then drift westward back into the Atlantic and northward to be discovered in Benbecula in the western isles of Scotland. The boat had a waterproof pod containing a chip that collected sensor data.{{cite news |last1=Graham |first1=Gillian |title=Little boat built by students in Kennebunk completes Atlantic crossing |url=http://www.pressherald.com/2017/06/27/kennebunk-student-made-boat-completes-long-overseas-journey/ |work=Portland Press Herald|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170627093653/http://www.pressherald.com/2017/06/27/kennebunk-student-made-boat-completes-long-overseas-journey/ |archive-date=June 27, 2017 |date=June 27, 2017 |url-status=live}}
• In July 2017, a Scottish widower seeking female companionship set 2,000 bottled messages adrift at various locations around the U.K., and though claiming he received responses from 50 women, ceased the practice in response to public complaints and an investigation by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.{{cite news |title=Bottle man lands 50 potential dates |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-40738484 |publisher=BBC |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171113022838/http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-40738484 |archive-date=November 13, 2017 |date=July 27, 2017 |url-status=live }}
• In January 2018, a couple walking on a beach in Western Australia discovered a bottled message that had been launched on June 12, 1886, from the German barque {{ship||Paula|1876 barque|2}} conducting drift bottle experiments for the German Naval Observatory. The message's authenticity was corroborated through the ship captain's original Meteorological Journal, and, at 131 years' duration, eclipsed the previous corroborated record duration of 108 years.{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-43299283 |title=Oldest message in a bottle found on beach |date=March 6, 2018 |work=BBC News |language=en-GB |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180307062450/http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-43299283 |archive-date=March 7, 2018 |url-status=live }}{{cite magazine |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/131-year-old-message-bottle-found-australian-beach-180968381/ |title=131-Year-Old Message in a Bottle Found on Australian Beach |date=March 7, 2018 |last=Katz |first=Brigit |magazine=Smithsonian |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180308042633/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/131-year-old-message-bottle-found-australian-beach-180968381/ |archive-date=March 8, 2018 |url-status=live }} The bottle's thick glass and its opening's narrow bore are thought to have protected the paper from the elements.
• In the summer of 2018, a bottled typewritten message dated March 26, 1930, was discovered in the roof of the twelfth-century Goslar Cathedral in Goslar, Germany, signed by four roofers who bemoaned the economic state of that country. The bottle was discovered by a roofer who was the grandson of one of the signatories, who had been an 18-year-old roofing apprentice in 1930. Goslar's mayor replaced the bottle with a copy of the 1930 message, adding his own confidential message.{{cite news |last1=Beck |first1=Luisa |title=A German roofer working on a cathedral found a message in bottle, written by his grandfather |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/a-german-roofer-working-on-a-cathedral-found-a-message-in-a-bottle-written-by-his-grandfather/2018/09/19/01ddcf8c-b69c-11e8-a2c5-3187f427e253_story.html |newspaper=Washington Post|date=September 19, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180920113802/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/a-german-roofer-working-on-a-cathedral-found-a-message-in-a-bottle-written-by-his-grandfather/2018/09/19/01ddcf8c-b69c-11e8-a2c5-3187f427e253_story.html |archive-date=September 20, 2018 |url-status=live }} ("Difficult times of war lie behind us. ... We hope for better times soon to come.")
• In May 2019, a Gatorade bottle with a four-page letter, written in Spanish, was found in Brown Bay, near Mount Gambier, South Australia. The letter had been sent from Caleta Córdoba, near Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina by a mother and two children as a loving tribute to their husband and father who had died of a stroke a year earlier.{{cite news |last1=Cowie |first1=Tom |last2=Fowler |first2=Michael |title=Message in a bottle crosses two oceans to land on an Australian beach |url=https://www.smh.com.au/national/message-in-a-bottle-crosses-two-oceans-to-land-on-an-australian-beach-20191122-p53d9a.html |work=The Sydney Morning Herald |date=November 23, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191127181732/https://www.smh.com.au/national/message-in-a-bottle-crosses-two-oceans-to-land-on-an-australian-beach-20191122-p53d9a.html |archive-date=November 27, 2019 |url-status=live }}
• In June 2019, three hikers trapped above a waterfall on California's Arroyo Seco tributary released a Nalgene bottled SOS message that was quickly discovered a quarter mile (0.4 km) downstream, allowing them to be rescued by helicopter the following morning.{{cite news |title=Message in a bottle leads to rescue of California family stranded on 40-foot waterfall |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-family-stranded-on-top-of-waterfall-saved-by-message-in-a-bottle/ |publisher=CBS News |date=September 11, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190911180058/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-family-stranded-on-top-of-waterfall-saved-by-message-in-a-bottle/ |archive-date=September 11, 2019 |url-status=live}}{{cite news |last1=Free |first1=Cathy |title=Trapped at a waterfall, this man sent out an SOS message in a bottle. Someone actually found it downstream. |url=https://beta.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/09/09/trapped-waterfall-this-man-sent-out-an-sos-message-bottle-someone-actually-found-it-downstream/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=September 9, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190911032229/https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/09/09/trapped-waterfall-this-man-sent-out-an-sos-message-bottle-someone-actually-found-it-downstream/?arc404=true&noredirect=on |archive-date=September 11, 2019 |url-status=live }}
• In late 2019, a bottled message launched on August 1, 1994, by 12-year-old Ryan Mead was found near the mouth of the Taramakau River, New Zealand, the find occurring mere months after Mead died at age 37 in a freak accident inhaling fumes while laying carpet.{{cite news |last1=Carroll |first1=Joanne |title=Message in bottle washes up from man who died in 'freak accident' in March |url=https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/117647025/message-in-bottle-washes-up-from-man-who-died-in-freak-accident-in-march |work=Stuff |date=November 22, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191123172817/https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/117647025/message-in-bottle-washes-up-from-man-who-died-in-freak-accident-in-march |archive-date=November 23, 2019 |location=New Zealand}}

Table listing long-duration (>25-year) events involving messages in bottles (scroll):

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: ^s denotes stationary messages (placed on land, not in a body of water).

{{anchor|The Tides That Bind|The tides that bind|the tides that bind}}

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Besides interest in citizen science drift-bottle experiments, message-in-a-bottle lore has often been of a romantic or poetic nature. Such messages have been romanticized in literature, from Edgar Allan Poe's 1833 story "MS. Found in a Bottle" through Nicholas Sparks' 1998 Message in a Bottle.{{cite news|url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2013/02/12/messages-bottle-still-carry-hint-romance/dduFIyJjc451G7gZZNU0xM/story.html|title=Messages in a bottle chart a lifelong romance with the sea|last1=Brogan|first1=Jan|date=February 12, 2013|work=The Boston Globe|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130217055519/http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2013/02/12/messages-bottle-still-carry-hint-romance/dduFIyJjc451G7gZZNU0xM/story.html|archive-date=February 17, 2013|url-status=live}} ("MS." means manuscript.) Clint Buffington, subject of the 2019 documentary short film The Tides That Bind / A Message in a Bottle Story,{{cite web |title=The Tides That Bind (2019) |url=https://atlanticcitycinefest.org/movie/the-tides-that-bind/ |publisher=Atlantic City Cinefest |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190828051232/https://atlanticcitycinefest.org/movie/the-tides-that-bind/ |archive-date=August 28, 2019 |url-status=live }} surmised in an interview with The Guardian that sending a bottled message expresses a hope to find connection in a fear-filled world.{{cite news |last1=Meakin |first1=Nione (interviewer) |last2=Buffington |first2=Clint (interviewee) |title=A message in a bottle ... and a journey round the world |url=https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/jan/21/message-in-a-bottle-journey-round-the-world-turks-and-caicos |work=The Guardian |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160420105232/http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/jan/21/message-in-a-bottle-journey-round-the-world-turks-and-caicos |archive-date=April 20, 2016 |date=January 21, 2016 |url-status=live }} In Newsweek Ryan Bort recounted various historical messages as being cries for help, or "final, poetic words of resignation left behind for (an) indifferent sea", or from "lonely, lovelorn souls, searching for serendipity", or a search for "affirmation ... that comes from somewhere other than yourself". Bort described sending a message in a bottle as a romantic act that has "such a delicious potential for magic" or as "surrendering a part of yourself to something larger", concluding that "every message in a bottle is a prayer".{{cite magazine |last1=Bort |first1=Ryan |title=A Brooklyn Artist, the North Atlantic Garbage Patch and the Magic of the Message in a Bottle |url=http://www.newsweek.com/new-york-pelagic-message-bottle-george-boorujy-433926 |magazine=Newsweek |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160416002303/http://www.newsweek.com/new-york-pelagic-message-bottle-george-boorujy-433926 |archive-date=April 16, 2016 |date=March 7, 2016 |url-status=live }}

Finding a bottled message has generally been viewed positively, the finder of a 98-year-old message referring to his find as winning the lottery. However, intense media attention over a personal relationship that resulted from one woman's find, is said to have caused her to remark that had she known what would happen, she would have left the bottle on the beach. Another woman said she initially felt shocked and violated by publication of the personal suffering she had expressed in a bottled letter that she never expected would be found or read.

{{multiple image

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| image1=Pioneer10-plaque.jpg | width1= | caption1=The Pioneer plaque (1972, 1973)

| image2 = The Sounds of Earth Record Cover - GPN-2000-001978.jpg | width2= | caption2 =The Voyager Golden Record (1977) contained images and encoded sounds

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{{See also|Balloon mail|Time capsule}}

The term "message in a bottle" has been applied to techniques of communication that do not literally involve a bottle or a water-based method of conveyance, such as the Europa Clipper plaque (2024),{{cite news |last1=Strickland |first1=Ashley |title=See the new 'golden record' launching to an ocean world this year |url=https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/12/world/nasa-europa-clipper-symbolic-artwork-scn/ |publisher=CNN |date=12 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240317235822/https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/12/world/nasa-europa-clipper-symbolic-artwork-scn |archive-date=17 March 2024}} the Pioneer plaque (1972, 1973), the Voyager Golden Record (1977), and even radio-borne messages (see Cosmic Call, Teen Age Message, A Message from Earth), all directed into space.{{cite news |last1=Hepburn |first1=Jonathan |title=Global 'message in a bottle' to be beamed to the stars carrying contributions from the public |url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-07/global-message-in-a-bottle-to-transmit-to-space/7146908 |publisher=Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160207105954/http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-07/global-message-in-a-bottle-to-transmit-to-space/7146908 |archive-date=February 7, 2016 |date=February 7, 2016 |url-status=live}}{{cite news |last1=Keller |first1=C. |last2=Wessolowski |first2=M. |title=Flaschenpost: Norweger suchen jetzt mit (Message in a Bottle: Norwegians are now seeking) |url=http://www.mittelhessen.de/lokales/region-dillenburg_artikel,-Flaschenpost-Norweger-suchen-jetzt-mit-_arid,111950.html |work=Zeitungsgruppe Lahn-Dill (MittelHessen = Central Hessian) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150201063618/http://www.mittelhessen.de/lokales/region-dillenburg_artikel%2C-Flaschenpost-Norweger-suchen-jetzt-mit-_arid%2C111950.html |archive-date=February 1, 2015 |date=April 5, 2013 |url-status=dead }}

Balloon mail involves sending undirected messages through the air rather than into bodies of water. For example, during the Prussian Siege of Paris (1870–1871) about 2.5 million letters were sent by hot air balloon, the only way Parisians' letters could reach the rest of France.{{cite news |last1=Maher |first1=Louise |title=Letter flown by balloon out of besieged Paris in 1870 discovered in National Archives |url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-16/letter-flown-out-of-paris-by-hot-air-ballon-in-1870-found/6408654 |publisher=Australian Broadcasting Corporation |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161027201056/http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-16/letter-flown-out-of-paris-by-hot-air-ballon-in-1870-found/6408654 |archive-date=October 27, 2016 |date=February 24, 2016 |url-status=live}}

Stationary time capsules have been termed "messages in a bottle", such as a 1935 message in a lemonade bottle correctly portending difficult times, which was found in 2016 by masons restoring damaged Portland stone at Southampton Guildhall.{{cite news |title='Message in a bottle' discovered in Southampton |url=http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2016-02-09/message-in-a-bottle-discovered-in-southampton/ |publisher=ITV |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160210164227/http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2016-02-09/message-in-a-bottle-discovered-in-southampton/ |archive-date=February 10, 2016 |date=February 9, 2016 |url-status=live }} A geologist left a bottled message in 1959 in a cairn on isolated Ward Hunt Island (Canada, 83°N latitude), allowing its finders in 2013 to determine that a nearby glacier had retreated over 200 feet in the intervening 54 years.{{cite news |last1=Mohan |first1=Geoffrey |title=Message in a bottle found 54 years later in Arctic |url=http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-message-in-bottle-arctic-20131219-story.html |work=Los Angeles Times |date=December 20, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140706145108/http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-message-in-bottle-arctic-20131219-story.html |archive-date=July 6, 2014 |url-status=live }} More durable examples of time capsules are the Westinghouse Time Capsules of the 1939 and 1964 New York World's Fairs, intended to be opened 5,000 years after their creation.{{cite web |last1=Sterbenz |first1=Christina |title=An Incredibly Ambitious Time Capsule Was Sealed 75 Years Ago Today — Here's What's Inside |url=http://www.businessinsider.com/westinghouse-time-capsule-2014-4 |website=Business Insider |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160331130601/http://www.businessinsider.com/westinghouse-time-capsule-2014-4 |archive-date=March 31, 2016 |date=April 30, 2014 |url-status=live }}

Prisoners from the Auschwitz concentration camp concealed bottles containing sketches{{cite news |last1=Macbeth |first1=Alex |title='Witness to Extermination': Auschwitz Museum Publishes Prisoner Sketchbook |url=http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/witness-to-extermination-auschwitz-museum-publishes-prisoner-sketchbook-a-809591.html |work=Der Spiegel |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160418031130/http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/witness-to-extermination-auschwitz-museum-publishes-prisoner-sketchbook-a-809591.html |archive-date=April 18, 2016 |date=January 17, 2012 |url-status=live }} Detailed sketches were found in a camp barracks in 1947. and writings• {{cite news |title=Builders find Auschwitz message

|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8021845.stm |work=BBC News |date=April 27, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170307130950/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8021845.stm |archive-date=March 7, 2017 |url-status=live}} Short prisoner list was found in 2009 in a wall of a bomb shelter that prisoners were forced to build. • {{cite web|title=Záhadný odkaz väzňov v Osvienčime: Autor je už známy! (Mysterious link from prisoners in Auschwitz: The author is already known!) |url=http://www.cas.sk/clanok/115020/zahadny-odkaz-vaznov-v-osviencime-autor-je-uz-znamy/ |publisher=Nový čas |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160729151358/http://www.cas.sk/clanok/115020/zahadny-odkaz-vaznov-v-osviencime-autor-je-uz-znamy/ |archive-date=July 29, 2016 |language=sk |date=April 30, 2009 |url-status=live }} that were found after World War II.

Certain emergency medical services urge patients to record information describing their medical conditions, medications and drug allergies, emergency contacts,{{cite web |title=What is 'Message in a Bottle'? |url=http://www.lions105w.org.uk/MIAB.pdf |publisher=Lions Clubs International - District 105W |access-date=December 28, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161110083141/http://www.lions105w.org.uk/MIAB.pdf |archive-date=November 10, 2016 |date=2013 |url-status=dead }} as well as advance healthcare directives for when the patients are incapacitated{{cite web |title=13.4 Adult "Do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation" (DNACPR / Advance Decision to Refuse Treatment (ADRT) |url=http://www.futureplanning.org.uk/uploads/8/0/4/0/80407130/final_dnacpr_guidance_for_primary_care_and_out_of_hours.pdf |publisher=South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust |access-date=December 28, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171228185509/http://www.futureplanning.org.uk/uploads/8/0/4/0/80407130/final_dnacpr_guidance_for_primary_care_and_out_of_hours.pdf |archive-date=December 28, 2017 |url-status=live }} Similar to DNR (Do not resuscitate) instruction in the U.S. or suffer from dementia or learning difficulties,{{cite news |last1=Smith |first1=Ian |title=Message in a bottle scheme launched |url=https://www.berwick-advertiser.co.uk/health/message-in-a-bottle-scheme-launched-1-4931493 |work=Berwick Advertiser |date=May 21, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190612192340/https://www.berwick-advertiser.co.uk/health/message-in-a-bottle-scheme-launched-1-4931493 |archive-date=June 12, 2019 |location=Berwick upon Tweed, Northumberland, U.K. |url-status=live }} and place the record as a special "message in a bottle" stored in (conventionally) a refrigerator, where paramedics can quickly locate it.

Plastic bottles are known to constitute plastic marine pollution, and eventually break down into smaller pieces because of ultraviolet light, salt degradation or wave action. Glass bottles can break into sharp-edged pieces, and bottle caps are ingested by sea birds.{{cite news |last1=Sinclair |first1=Jesara |title=Why throwing a message in a bottle into the ocean might be a bad idea |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-messages-bottles-ocean-plastic-pollution-1.4761138 |publisher=CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) |date=July 30, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180827003630/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-messages-bottles-ocean-plastic-pollution-1.4761138 |archive-date=August 27, 2018 |url-status=live }}

Some agencies continue to use drift bottles into the 21st century, but with increased awareness that man-made floating items can harm marine life or constitute waste material, biodegradable drift cards and biodegradable wooden drifters with non-toxic ink are gaining favor.

• Beachcombing
• Drifter (oceanography)
• Earth's black box
• Flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict
• Friendly Floatees, plastic bath toys accidentally released in the Pacific in 1992
• Ice rafting
• Swallow float

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{{Reflist | 2}}

• {{cite book |last1=Brown |first1=Paul |title=Messages from the Sea: Letters and Notes from a Lost Era Found in Bottles and on Beaches Around the World |date=2016 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bPxMDwAAQBAJ |publisher=Superelastic |isbn=9780995541214}}
• {{cite book |last1=Ebbesmeyer |first1=Curtis |last2=Scigliano |first2=Eric |title=Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science |date=2009 |publisher=Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers |isbn=978-0-06-155841-2 |title-link=Wiktionary:flotsam }}
• {{cite book |last=Kraske |first=Robert |year=1977 |title=The Twelve Million Dollar Note: Strange but True Tales of Messages Found in Seagoing Bottles |publisher=Thomas Nelson (publ.); 1st ed |isbn=978-0-8407-6575-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/twelvemilliondol00kras }}
• {{cite book|last1=Moody |first1=Skye |title=Washed Up: The Curious Journeys of Flotsam and Jetsam |date=2010 |publisher=Sasquatch Books |isbn=978-1570617386 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dCpPBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT56 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160904221424/https://books.google.com/books?id=dCpPBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT56 |archive-date=September 4, 2016 |url-status=live }}

{{Commons category|Message in a bottle}}

{{Wiktionary|message in a bottle}}

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Category:Emergency communication

Category:History of communication

Category:Interstellar messages

Category:Letters (message)

Category:Maritime communication

Category:Physical oceanography