World’s Oldest Message in a Bottle Has Just Been Found After 132 Years

A new record has been set for the longest time that a message in a bottle has remained unread. Just recently, a family discovered a 132-year-old message in a bottle while they were taking a walk along a beach in Australia, around 180 kilometers (111 miles) north of Perth.

It was discovered that a German sailor tossed the message in a bottle overboard in the middle of the Indian Ocean on June 12, 1886. Before this, the oldest message in a bottle recorded was 108 years old. It was a capsule that was lost in the North Sea before it was found in Germany.

The family who found the bottle has loaned their discovery to the Western Australian Museum to display for the next two years.

Tonya Illman, who found the bottle, said in a statement:

“My friend Grace Ricciardo and I were walking across the dunes when I saw something sticking out of the sand so I went to take a closer look.

“It just looked like a lovely old bottle so I picked it up thinking it might look good in my bookcase. My son’s girlfriend was the one who discovered the note when she went to tip the sand out. The note was damp, rolled tightly and wrapped with string. We took it home and dried it out, and when we opened it we saw it was a printed form, in German, with very faint German handwriting on it.”

The bottle contained a rolled-up note in German and was dated June 12, 1886. The note stated the coordinates of where the bottled was tossed – around 950 kilometers (590 miles) from the coast in the Indian Ocean.

It also said that the sailor was onboard a German ship called Paula, which was part of an oceanographic exploration to study ocean currents and find faster shipping routes.

Experts believe the discovery is authentic.

According to the Australian Museum’s report, the bottle appears to be a real late-19th-century Dutch gin bottle. There’s also a solid written proof of the bottle’s journey. Dr. Ross Anderson, Assistant Curator of Maritime Archaeology at the WA Museum, said:

“Extraordinary finds need extraordinary evidence to support them. Incredibly, an archival search in Germany found Paula’s original Meteorological Journal and there was an entry for June 12, 1886, made by the captain, recording a drift bottle having been thrown overboard. The date and the coordinates correspond exactly with those on the bottle message.”

Researchers at the WA Museum believe the bottle reached Australia a year after it was tossed. But it got covered in damp sand and was not unearthed until many years later.