While their achievement has not yet been acknowledged, the association thinks the 108-year-old message in the bottle will soon be recognized as the oldest letter to have ever been found on the sea.
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When the couple unfurled the note inside, they found a message in English, German and Dutch.
The Association was very excited when the couple arrived with the message because it was one of a thousand bottles that had been released by George Parker Bidder between the years of 1904 and 1906. The data gathered from the bottles allowed Bidder to prove that deep sea currents flowed from east to west in the North Sea.
While providing more information on the bottle, Mrs. Winkler said finding message in a bottle on the beach is always exciting.
The letter also contains the first reward to have ever been made through a message in a bottle.
Baker says they are not sure if the bottle has been tossing around in the ocean the entire time, or if it has spent numerous years buried under the sand.
The MBA is waiting on an official announcement from the Guinness World Records whether the message in a bottle will go down in the history as the oldest. “We certainly weren’t expecting to receive any more of the postcards”. Each bottle had a message to take it to the Marine Biological Association when found as well as a post card that promised one shilling to those who found the bottles.
Earlier this year, Marianne Winkler, a retired postal worker and her husband were vacationing on the North Sea island of Amrum, Germany, when they stumbled upon a bottle with a message inside! According to them, they packaged the letter in a sturdy envelope. Some weeks ago, some other researchers have found a site similar to Stonehenge, revealing secrets about the ways our ancestors used to live.
Baker said the bottle was one of some 1,000 released into the North Sea by researcher George Parker Bidder, who later became the association’s president.
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True to their word, the association sent a shilling to the couple as the promised payment. To ensure they would be swept by the currents below the ocean’s surface, the bottles were designed to float just above the sea bed.
