Andrew Leaper, the captain of a fishing boat in Scotland, recently found a message in a bottle that was released into the ocean 98 years ago. The unusual discovery took place off the coast of Shetland and sets a new Guinness World Record for the oldest such message ever recovered.
The bottle was originally released in 1914 as part of a scientific research project to study the ocean currents around Scotland. Throughout the course of the study, 1890 bottles were released into the ocean, each of which was designed to sink and move with tides. To date, just 315 of them have been recovered.
And what was inside the bottle? According to the BBC it contained a postcard that offered the person who found it a reward of six pence. The message was also dated from June of 1914 and was released by Captain CH Brown of the Glasgow School of Navigation.
The discovery of the bottle breaks the previous record for the oldest ever found by more than five years. In a strange twist of coincidence, that bottle was discovered by the same fishing boat – the “Copious” – back in 2006 when she was under the command of Captain Mark Anderson, a friend of Leaper.
This is no word on whether or not Leaper collected on his six pence.
[Photo credit: Scottish Government/AP Photo