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In a Bottle

“der Reise von” means “the journey from”, which Kym read as Cardiff. The destination wasn’t clear until Ross Anderson found it was Macassar; it was probably carrying coal, Cardiff’s main export at the time.  There was also another reference to the ship in the South Australian newspapers on May 21st, 1881. The ship was becalmed and needed provisions, albeit 5 years prior to this bottle being thrown overboard.

Deutsche Seewarte in Hamburg was the organisation that provided the note. The German text asked the finder to fill in the back of the form with the details of where and when it was found (January 21st, 2018 at 5.45pm AWST at LAT: 30.79 LONG: 115.19) so that they could establish global current patterns.

Deutsche Seewarte changed names a couple of times and is now known as the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency.  The head librarian there, Martina Plettendorff, was involved in the search for evidence from very early on and proved to be enormously helpful. It was clear that their organisation was as excited as the WA museum and the Illmans.

Only 10% of the thousands of bottles thrown overboard during this decades-long research program were ever found but from that information, drift maps were produced.  Above is the map for the Indian Ocean which doesn’t include the Illman’s bottle’s route.

The noticeable point here is that all of the bottles that washed up on Australian soil, did so on the southern coast making this bottle the only one to have been discovered on the west coast. The last Deutsche Seewarte bottle to be found was in Denmark on January 7th, 1934.

The bottle was made by Daniel Visser and Zonen, Schiedam and was thought to have originally held gin or “genever”. The WA Maritime Museum contacted their Dutch archeologist who said, “The starting point of production of this specific type of gin bottle is c 1880 (typical tapered shape of the rim). The oldest once (sic) are quite angular, just as older types. The later ones have a more rounded shoulder. The development from angular to round takes about 20-30 years and is gradual. Your bottle should be places (sic)  somewhere in this development”

Remarkably the bottle had no lid on it when found about 50m east of the high water mark in the Wedge Island dunes.  It was half sticking out of the sand, with the neck of the bottle slightly raised in an area with some exposed rubbish around it.  The bottle was about 1/3rd filled with moist sand and the scrolled note was on top of the sand. This area of the Wedge dunes would not have seen many cars through it in the days prior to the find and few, if any, people would have walked through the area.

In the lead up to the find, heavy rain and strong winds associated with a cyclone in the north of the state may have led to the lid-less bottle being exposed.

It took about 3 weeks of research and emails flying across the world to get to the point where the German Maritime and Hydrographic Agency was prepared to say that it was indeed one of their original forms.

It is truly a miracle that the bottle survived a 950km sea voyage and then sat untouched in the dunes for probably 100+ years. When Guinness World Records confirms the Illman’s find as the “oldest  message in a bottle”, it will beat the existing 108-year record by more than 23 years.

The WA Museum produced a thorough review of the evidence which makes for fascinating reading.

The Australian National Maritime Museum have also provided a summary of evidence.

The find was made public on Tuesday March 6th at a press conference at the WA Maritime Museum with a copy of the front and back of the note presented to the Perth German Consul, Torsten Ketelsen. See less…