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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
 Posted: 13-07-2005 18:16 Post subject: |
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| uair01 wrote: | In theory they could have gone all the way to the Rhine and into the ocean 
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The lower Rhine flows through Holland, where it is heavily canalised and controlled by locks and barrages. The Dutch are keen on keeping their waterways clean, too, so the chance of a bottle reaching the open sea would seem slight.
The trouble with glass bottles is they break into sharp fragments.
Scenario:
High tide, and a wave smashes a bottle against the sea wall.
Low tide, and children come to play on the beach...
OUCH!
(Sure, given time the sea will grind the fragments into harmless glass pebbles, but in the meantime they are a danger.) |
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Leaferne Defrost indoors
Joined: 07 Feb 2004 Total posts: 4785 Location: Graceland, mama Age: 43 Gender: Female |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 23-11-2005 13:58 Post subject: Bottle's message from the grave |
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| Quote: | Bottle's message from the grave
John Thompson found the 41-year-old message
A message in a bottle has been found washed up on a Cumbrian coastline 41 years after being thrown into the sea.
The bottle, with the message "Please reply" was thrown into the sea in July 1964 by 13-year-old Kevin Wainhouse, from Moston, in Manchester.
While out walking in Cark-in-Cartmel recently, John Thompson found it and began a search for the owner.
Kevin's brother was traced but he revealed Kevin had died aged 33. The bottle will be returned to his family.
The message was written on the back of a chocolate wrapper and placed inside a cola bottle, sealed with a cork.
It was spooky - like a message from the grave
Tony Wainhouse
It is thought to have been thrown into the sea on the North West coast.
Mr Thompson said: "It had been beaten and battered about and it's a good job they produced strong cola bottles in those days.
"It could have been around the world a couple of times for all I know."
He stuck together the wet wrapper and made out the name Kevin and part of an address Moston, Manchester.
Kevin Wainhouse, who died young, wrote the message in 1964
Kevin's brother, Tony Wainhouse, 38, was told of the appeal and saw the handwriting.
He said: "It was spooky - like a message from the grave."
Their mother, Mary, said it brought back poignant memories: "It makes me remember him.
"It took me a long time to get over him dying like that. I was dumbstruck, amazed."
The two sides of the story will meet shortly and the bottle and message returned to the family.
Mr Thompson said: "It would have been nice to be able to get in contact with Kevin and have a drink and see what had happened over the past 41 years. It's very sad."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4458992.stm |
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| KeyserXSoze King of Otters
Great Old One Joined: 02 Jun 2002 Total posts: 1040 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 04-02-2006 20:03 Post subject: Message in a bottle |
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Source | Quote: | Sailor Gets Angry Reply to Bottle Message
NAPEAGUE, N.Y. (AP) - A sailor who sent a message out to sea in a bottle says he received a reply from England - accusing him of littering. "I kind of felt like no good deed goes unpunished," Harvey Bennett, 55, told the East Hampton Star.
The plastic bottle was one of five that Bennett placed in the ocean off Long Island in August.
Last week, he excitedly opened a letter from England, and was stunned by the reply:
"I recently found your bottle while taking a scenic walk on the beach by Poole Harbour. While you may consider this some profound experiment on the path and speed" of "oceanic currents, I have another name for it, litter."
"You Americans don't seem to be happy unless you are mucking about somewhere," says the letter, signed by Henry Biggelsworth of Bournemouth, in Dorset County.
Bennett, who has a picture of the queen of England in his Amagansett tackle shop, says that Poole Harbor is just a short distance from Weymouth Harbor. That's where the Bennett family embarked for America in 1644.
The New York Post carried the report on Friday, giving attribution to the East Hampton Star.
Bennett did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press on Friday. |
Made me laugh  |
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| gncxx King-Size Canary
Great Old One Joined: 25 Aug 2001 Total posts: 13555 Location: Eh? Gender: Male |
| Posted: 04-02-2006 20:12 Post subject: |
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| Made me laugh too, I read it in the paper this morning! |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 16-03-2006 04:32 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Mass. Bottle Message Ends Up in Africa
Mar 10, 4:13 PM (ET)
LYNN, Mass. (AP) - A message in a bottle launched in Massachusetts two years ago has traveled halfway around the world. In a letter postmarked from Morocco, 26-year-old Assila Ahmed wrote that he'd found a bottle thrown into the water by Genevive Hernandez of Lynn.
Hernandez, now a 13-year-old seventh grader, was among group of fifth-graders who on Nov. 20, 2003 put messages in bottles and cast them off from Lynn's shores that stormy day. Hernandez said she's amazed that her green Sprite bottle made it as far as it did since most of them either bounced right back to shore or ended up only as far as the Cape.
"I thought it wasn't going anywhere," said Hernandez. "Mine was stuck on the seaweed."
Students received replies from 14 people before Hernandez received hers. Most were from the Cape Cod area. One made it as far as England.
But Hernandez's bottle had, by far, the longest journey, traveling 3,500 miles.
In the letter to Hernandez, Ahmed said he found the bottle about 10:30 a.m. on Dec. 18, 2005. Hernandez' bright orange card wrapped in plastic bore the address the Brickett School in Lynn, where she attended classes two years ago.
The only request from the African man: a letter back from Hernandez.
Hernandez's teacher fifth-grade teacher at Brickett, Sheila Thomas, said he will get one.
Thomas recalled the stormy day the bottles were launched.
"The bottles kept coming back up on the rocks and I ended up getting down in the water and getting them back out," she said. "It was not an easy launch - I ended up soaking wet up to my knees." |
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060310/D8G8UO7O6.html |
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| ted_bloody_maul Great Old One Joined: 23 May 2003 Total posts: 4877 Location: Quester's Psykick Dancehall Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 13-10-2006 11:02 Post subject: Girl's message in a bottle reaches New Zealand |
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A six-year-old girl has caused a conundrum of global proportions after her attempts to send a message in a bottle to Norway ended up in New Zealand.
While on holiday with her grandparents on the north-east coast of Scotland, Keely Reid tossed a plastic water bottle into the Moray Firth in the expectant hope that the tide might carry it as far as the shores of Scandinavia.
However the girl and her family have been surprised to discover the bottle ended up travelling more than 20,000 miles in 47 days to be washed up on the beach of Whangamata on the north island of New Zealand.
The discarded bottle was apparently picked up by another six-year-old, James Wilson of Whangamata, who discovered the message inside and immediately wrote to Keely with proof that he had found it.
It is estimated that to find its way to New Zealand in such a short time the bottle must have travelled an average of 425 miles per day at almost 18 miles per hour.
In the 1860s, the clipper ship Thermopylae created a new fastest time from London to Australia of 63 days.
Even a modern day luxury cruise to New Zealand can take up to 40 days, including a short cut travelling through the Panama or Suez canals - so the fact the bottle arrived in Whangamata in little more than six weeks is mysterious.
Claire Matthews of the Macduff Marine Aquarium, which is situated just a few miles from where Keely threw her bottle into the sea, said New Zealand was about the last place she would think the bottle could or would have ended up. 'This bottle should really have become stuck in the Atlantic. I can't understand how it would have got off track like this and ended up in New Zealand.' 'I can't see how it got to New Zealand. Did somebody maybe pick it up and fly it to New Zealand? It is a bit of a mystery,' admits Pearl Reid, Keely's grandmother. Keely is not so surprised. Three years ago she dropped another bottle with a message into the sea at Aberdour and, two years later, it was recovered by a swimmer off the Dutch coast. 'It is brilliant, this bottle travelled farther than I ever have,' said Keely. However experts in ocean currents at the Fisheries Research Station laboratories in Aberdeen are under no doubt there must have been human intervention. 'As a scientist I would usually hedge my bets and leave room for some possibility but there is absolutely no way the bottle could have made it to New Zealand on its own, it must have been picked up by somebody,' said Dr Bill Turrell. 'There is no way it could have been picked up by some freak weather system - things just don't cross the equator. I don't like to shatter the poor girl's imaginings but there is no way it could happen.'
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1868083.ece |
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| gncxx King-Size Canary
Great Old One Joined: 25 Aug 2001 Total posts: 13555 Location: Eh? Gender: Male |
| Posted: 13-10-2006 16:08 Post subject: |
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| But what kind of person picks up a bottle - with message - in Scotland and flies it to a beach in New Zealand? Wouldn't it have been found even sooner or did the prankster hang onto it for a couple of months? |
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| kirmildew Dirty Badger
Great Old One Joined: 23 May 2006 Total posts: 243 Location: on the sofa, usually Gender: Female |
| Posted: 13-10-2006 19:46 Post subject: |
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I have always toyed with the idea of tossing one out into the sea (fnarr) but I haven't actually done it. I think it would have to be a glass one; taking the chance of it breaking but at least if it does, it will be ground down naturally.
Of course, if you still think it's littering, you can always bury a time capsule instead. I used to make them up as a child, forget to bury them, find them at the back of a drawer much later and be embarrassed at my childish scribblings of the year before. So it was in a way like burying it- my room was quite the tip in my childhood days!
I wish I'd actually got round to burying one, though. It would be interesting to see what I thought would be fun to bury in my garden over 15 years ago. |
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| ogopogo3 Just a CabbageHead Joined: 25 Oct 2001 Total posts: 1684 Location: Minnesota Age: 41 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 14-10-2006 11:41 Post subject: |
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| Kondoru wrote: | I put a message in a bottle and thre it in the Thames at cricklade some years back. (1991 I think)
no reply.
But what true fortean hasnt ever attempted this? |
For me it was tying notes on the strings of helium balloons and letting them go. I never got a reply. |
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| gncxx King-Size Canary
Great Old One Joined: 25 Aug 2001 Total posts: 13555 Location: Eh? Gender: Male |
| Posted: 14-10-2006 15:44 Post subject: |
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| kirmildew wrote: | I have always toyed with the idea of tossing one out into the sea (fnarr) but I haven't actually done it. I think it would have to be a glass one; taking the chance of it breaking but at least if it does, it will be ground down naturally.
Of course, if you still think it's littering, you can always bury a time capsule instead. I used to make them up as a child, forget to bury them, find them at the back of a drawer much later and be embarrassed at my childish scribblings of the year before. So it was in a way like burying it- my room was quite the tip in my childhood days!
I wish I'd actually got round to burying one, though. It would be interesting to see what I thought would be fun to bury in my garden over 15 years ago. |
Blue Peter serves as a warning against time capsules. When they dug up both of their's from the BP garden in the year 2000 they found the contents soggy and dirty from the soil and concluded they'd have been better off storing them on top of a wardrobe. |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 17-02-2007 15:59 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Romantics clamour to write by sea-mail
Will Pavia
Even by Royal Mail’s standards it must be Britain’s least effective postal service.
Ten years ago Stuart Conway, 45, set up a website offering to take people’s messages, put them in a bottle and lob them into the Channel from the end of Brighton Pier.
The self-employed data administrator has now “delivered” nearly seven thousand messages. He also made his program free for others to copy, helping to create nearly thirty other “message in a bottle” services from Australia to the coasts of the Americas, sending another 8,000 messages bobbing into the briney.
The sea may be beautiful and unfathomable, but these are not particularly useful qualities for a postman. As far as Mr Conway knows, only 20 or so messages have ever been found. This does not deter the senders, whose notes continue to pour from his printer in an upstairs room of his house in Hove. Some are general suggestions to no one in particular. “Don’t take anyone else’s advice,” advises a 14-year-old girl from Germany.
Others seek advice, such as the teenage girl who likes her boyfriend very much, but likes sleeping with another friend better, and the 17-year-old boy from Spain who thinks that his life is over and is contemplating suicide.
Mr Conway places messages mourning a death in champagne bottles, in the hope that they will last longer.
Many senders are placing lonely hearts advertisements. “Female, over 40, full of dreams,” runs one. “If you are male, over 40, full of dreams, contact me.”
An Italian woman aged 22 is moving to Brighton and hopes to find friends. “It was tempting to reply saying ‘I’ll take you for a drink, sweetie’,” Mr Conway said, but his free service carries a promise of confidentiality, and he never tries to contact the senders.
He says that when he reads their messages he often feels like a priest hearing a confession. At least a third of them concern unrequited love, mainly from women who still care for a former husband or boyfriend.
What is perhaps more surprising is the many thousands of notes addressed to specific individuals. An old man from Brazil writes to his two daughters who now live in Japan.
“I still hope that you will come back to Brazil some day before I die,” he writes. “If you happen to see this message, please get in touch.”
Some of the messages are addressed to American soldiers serving in Iraq, and there are many from people seeking to contact a former lover. They do not have the address, and seem to believe that a message in a bottle is the next best thing.
To provide bottles, Mr Conway is forced to drink a lot of beer, and scrounge from friends and overflowing bottle banks. As the tide turns, behind the Waltzer at the end of the pier, he leans back and throws them into the yellow-brown waves. The bottles set off in the direction of Cherbourg, but each day they will be dragged ten miles east and west by the changing tides.
A lucky few may make it into the Atlantic, and on towards Iceland, but of those that have been found, most have landed on sandy beaches in northern Brittany, the Netherlands and Germany. One made it through the Strait of Dover, and washed up among fish boxes on the North Sea island of Amrum.
Only one reached the intended recipient without delay. “It was to a Swedish language student in Brighton, from her boyfriend,” Mr Conway said. “I went and put it on her doorstep. It seemed stupid to throw it in the sea.”
Over and out
- In 1914 Private Thomas Hughes, later to die in the trenches, threw a bottle into the Channel from a troop carrier. It was found in the Thames Estuary in 1999, and the message delivered to his wife, by then 87 and living in New Zealand
- In 2005 a four-year-old girl’s message in a bottle travelled from Morecambe Bay to Perth, Australia, in six months
- The same year a US coastguard’s message in a bottle from New York was found on a beach in Poole Harbour by a man who wrote back accusing him of littering
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1398034.ece
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 25-07-2008 08:00 Post subject: |
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Penpals meet on beach where message in a bottle was found 40 years ago
A British mother has met her American pen pal on the beach where she found her friend's message in a bottle exactly 40 years ago.
By Richard Savill
Last Updated: 11:14PM BST 24 Jul 2008
Rosalind Hearse was just eight when she found the bottle which had been thrown over the side of a cruise ship in the Atlantic in 1968.
Three months later, it was washed up on a beach in south Wales, containing the message from American Sandra Morris, now Mrs Morris-Czapla, who was also eight.
The two girls started writing to each other and have been in touch ever since.
Mrs Morris-Czapla, 48, met with her friend on Thursday and visited Morfa beach, near Margam, South Wales, where the bottle was washed ashore.
Mrs Morris-Czapla had been on a ship returning to America following a family holiday in Europe when she wrote on a postcard "Whoever finds this bottle write to me at..."
In Wales, Rosalind, now Mrs Causey, was walking on the beach with her father Ken, a headmaster, when she spotted something glinting on the sand.
She opened the wine bottle to read the note, and her reply marked the start of their friendship.
Mrs Causey, now an IT consultant living in Haverhill, Suffolk, said: "I took the cork from the wine bottle and replied to Sandra's little note.
"I used to love seeing the postman bring me a letter with a US Air Mail stamp, although in these modern times we have now moved on from sea-mail to e-mail.
"Our friendship grew through our letters as we shared amazingly parallel lives.
"We each have two children, a boy and girl, and our eldest were born just 10 days apart."
The pen pals met for the first time face-to-face in 1976 when Mrs Causey, and her husband Mark, a chartered surveyor flew to America.
Mrs Morris-Czapla, who lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, Doug, a golf club manager, said: "It was lovely to visit the spot and it was a great way to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a very unusual friendship.
"You often hear stories of messages in a bottle floating thousands of miles but how often do you hear of people actually meeting up and making a connection as a result?"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2455534/Penpals-meet-on-beach-where-message-in-a-bottle-was-found-40-years-ago.html |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 15-11-2008 11:57 Post subject: |
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Deceased postman becomes celebrity in Holland after ashes wash up there
A deceased postman has become an unlikely celebrity in Holland after his ashes washed up there.
Last Updated: 4:15PM GMT 14 Nov 2008
After John Lea's cremation, one of his sons put his ashes in a bottle with photographs of Mr Lea and a few details about his life, such as the fact that he had been in the army and travelled a lot
Kevin Lea, 48, then dropped the bottle from a ferry half way across the Channel while on a trip to France after deciding his father needed "one last big adventure". 
It has since twice come ashore in Holland, leading to his father appearing in national papers and on TV.
Mr Lea senior, from Weymouth, Dorset, died last summer aged 78, leaving behind wife Pat and eight of his nine children.
His ashes were split into three parts; one buried at his favourite tree, another by his daughter's grave and the third part thrown into the sea.
Just a few weeks later Kevin received a letter from a couple in Holland, Peter and Rita de Man, who had found the bottle washed up on one of the country's islands.
They had returned it to the sea as requested, and days later it came ashore again on the same island, Texel.
This time it was found by Maarten Brugge who alerted the local paper and from there dead John's fame grew.
Kevin, who runs a launderette, said: "When I was contacted by Maarten he said he'd told the local paper and then it was picked up by the big national paper De Telegraaf.
"I lived in Holland for ten years and I can speak Dutch, which surprised them, and then I was contacted by the national TV channel Hart Van Nederland. I spoke to them and they showed all the pictures of dad and the feedback has been incredible.
"He's turned into a bit of a celebrity over there - I think he would have really liked that. I thought that it would be nice for dad to go on one last big adventure, and hopefully it is continuing.
"I bought a clear plastic contaioner that looked robust and waterproof and put in photos of dad and his obituary from the local paper. His ashes were in a camera film container and I wrote a descritpion of dad and what he had done during his life.
"The last person who found him said he was going to get the bottle taken out to sea by a fisherman, so perhaps it might come ashore in Denmark or Germany next.
"Dad had been in the army and worked as a postman, milkman and nightclub manager and during his life did a lot of work for charity. He has a wonderfully jolly man and it's great to think that he is still putting smiles on people's faces."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/3459646/Deceased-postman-becomes-celebrity-in-Holland-after-ashes-wash-up-there.html |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21362 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 28-10-2009 10:15 Post subject: |
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A sad little tale...
French love letter found on beach
A French love letter and a lock of hair have been discovered in a bottle after washing up on a Cornish beach.
Martin Leslie, a coastguard manager, discovered the bottle at Praa Sands when he was clearing debris from the beach in west Cornwall.
The bottle, which was sealed with candle wax, was sent on 28 September.
It was written in French by an unnamed woman who poured out her feelings and understandings for her lover who had to return to his wife.
The letter which, Mr Leslie tried to translate using the internet, found lots of references to love, death and missing someone.
He said: "I assumed that it was a suicidal note that we came across. I contacted Falmouth coastguard who sent it to our counterparts in France.
"It was found to be a love letter. She explained they had a good time together. She loves him but understands he has to return to his wife, and hopes she will find a man like him to live a beautiful life."
The letter did not include a name or address.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/8329295.stm |
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