- Feb 12, 2007
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This is really lovely. Andrew Malcolm has been launching messages in bottles since the 1950s, and has received quite a few replies. Great read!
Imagine typing a message, sending it off and waiting months for a reply, even years.
In an age of instant communications, we get annoyed if we must wait 30 minutes for a reply. I’m still awaiting replies to messages I launched decades ago – in bottles.
One day around 1950 on a ferry far off the New England coast, my father suggested we write a note, slip it into a bottle and toss it into the North Atlantic to see what might happen.
That was the first of many times we did that. We called it “doing a bottle.” It became an avocation I continue to this day.
Back at home after a bedtime story, Dad would reach to turn off the light. Just before darkness captured my room, he’d say, “I wonder where our bottle is tonight?”
So I would drift off to sleep, imagining the exotic foreign lands where our bottle might be washing ashore, and who might be finding it at that very moment. The bottles might have to survive fierce storms and rocky shores. They could land on a beach, then be washed out to sea again before someone happened by.
Dad and I got a world map so we might discuss possible landing spots, which, of course, meant researching ocean currents and foreign lands.
It’s not a coincidence that my first career goal was to become a foreign correspondent traveling to far-off lands to witness exotic events and sights, talk to strangers and write newspaper stories to send home – via cable in those days.
Here’s the amazing thing: I’ve received answers to my messages in bottles, many of them, in fact....
Messages in a bottle: Mysterious missives to distant strangers
Imagine typing a message, sending it off and waiting months for a reply, even years.
In an age of instant communications, we get annoyed if we must wait 30 minutes for a reply. I’m still awaiting replies to messages I launched decades ago – in bottles.
One day around 1950 on a ferry far off the New England coast, my father suggested we write a note, slip it into a bottle and toss it into the North Atlantic to see what might happen.
That was the first of many times we did that. We called it “doing a bottle.” It became an avocation I continue to this day.
Back at home after a bedtime story, Dad would reach to turn off the light. Just before darkness captured my room, he’d say, “I wonder where our bottle is tonight?”
So I would drift off to sleep, imagining the exotic foreign lands where our bottle might be washing ashore, and who might be finding it at that very moment. The bottles might have to survive fierce storms and rocky shores. They could land on a beach, then be washed out to sea again before someone happened by.
Dad and I got a world map so we might discuss possible landing spots, which, of course, meant researching ocean currents and foreign lands.
It’s not a coincidence that my first career goal was to become a foreign correspondent traveling to far-off lands to witness exotic events and sights, talk to strangers and write newspaper stories to send home – via cable in those days.
Here’s the amazing thing: I’ve received answers to my messages in bottles, many of them, in fact....
Messages in a bottle: Mysterious missives to distant strangers
