By Clint Buffington
As a message-in-a-bottle hunter, I see Australia as a paradise of walkable coastline. I gaze longingly at it on maps from my home in the United States. If you catch me twitching my legs in my sleep like a dog during a nap, chances are I am dreaming of beachcombing all 22,000 miles of Australia’s mainland coast. And, as it happens, there are a few messages in bottles that are required reading for Australian history buffs – including the oldest message in a bottle ever found.
The first message comes from 9 July 1909. The Argus reported that the following message in a bottle had washed up in Singapore: ‘June 18 – Come and help us. We are lost in one of the New Guinea islands, 30deg. 5min. Palmerston and Flenn’. The article continued: ‘The Minister for the Territory (Mr Peake) has communicated with the Prime Minister (Mr Deakin) to ascertain whether anything is being done in the matter by the federal authorities’.
There was such concern about this note that Australia’s House of Representatives discussed it immediately. It was suggested that a nearby British warship – the Merrie England – search for the men. The Prime Minister himself, Alfred Deakin, urged that ‘the nearest vessel…be instructed to proceed at once and make a search’ for Palmerston and Flenn.
Meanwhile, a Melbourne woman confessed to The Argus that she had sent a fake distress message in a bottle as ‘only a joke’ in the area just days before. She thought the fracas was her fault. Apparently, her message said, ‘May 24. We are wrecked on Elephant Island. Come to our rescue’. Obviously, this is nothing like Palmerston and Flenn’s message. Also, Elephant Island is near Antarctica, not New Guinea; the woman’s confession was dismissed.
Incredibly, after all this governmental hand-wringing, the story died. Did Prime Minister Deakin send a ship for Palmerston and Flenn? Were the men even real? No-one seems to know. The message, almost certainly, was a hoax. First, the coordinates of the Palmerston and Flenn message are incomplete and do not correspond to New Guinea. Sailors would know better. Second, to reach Singapore from New Guinea, the bottle would have travelled west, against dominant currents. It is just not possible.
Bizarrely, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, message-in-a-bottle hoaxes were wildly popular, inspired by a string of famous, fictional message-in-bottle stories. Nothing tickled people more than pretending to be doomed on a sinking ship, and sending a bottled note to that effect. Nevertheless, these hoaxes were convincing, with the Palmerston and Flenn hoax even roping in Australia’s second prime minister!
Let’s fast forward to World War I, when soldiers enjoyed tossing bottled letters overboard en route to the western front, reporting, refreshingly, that they were alive and well. Four New South Wales soldiers sent messages in bottles from the same boat – the S.S. Suevic – on the same day, Christmas 1915. They were found near each other on New Year’s Day, 1916.
One newspaper reported that three of the bottles washed up side by side, but that’s not even the weird part. Two of the messages said a woman had been found aboard the ship, dressed as a soldier: 16-year-old Maud Butler. Well, this caused quite a stir among the men and, indeed, across the nation. Butler became quite famous, and spoke to The Bendigo Independent a few days later. ‘My object was to do what I could to help,’ Butler explained. ‘I wanted to join the Red Cross, and I tried very hard to get accepted. When I failed, I bought a khaki suit and stowed away.’ She also cut her hair.
Aboard the Suevic, Maud escaped detection for two days, but her wrong-colored shoes gave her away. ‘It is a pity if they cannot find a way for me to be of some service to the poor wounded men. I learned first aid and was reckoned very good at it. I shall be at the front yet, you’ll see.’ Sadly, Butler never made it to the front. But goodness, don’t you just love her?
Shortly after Maud Butler’s World War I adventure, the Commonwealth Government offered a £10,000 prize to ‘the first Australians to fly from England to Australia in less than 30 days,’ according to the New South Wales State Library. Australian aviator brothers Ross and Keith Smith set out to do that in 1919. They were aided in the final portion of their trip by Captain H Cayley and the HMAS Sydney, a ship that served as a sort of short-term guide for the Smith brothers. As they flew over, they dropped a note in a pickle jar with a makeshift parachute that splashed into the sea near the ship.
The Sydney recovered the bottle, which held a note: ‘The Air, 10/12/19, Vickers Vimy, The Commander, HMAS. Very glad to see you. Many thanks for looking after us. Going strong. Keith Smith, Ross Smith, Sgt. J. Bennett, Sgt. W. H. Shiers’. Soon after, they landed in Port Darwin, then flew on to Sydney, collecting the £10,000 prize and making Australian history by completing the England to Australia flight in 28 days. In light of this, 22 hours from London to Sydney direct doesn’t seem so bad, does it?
One of Australia’s most surprising bottled notes, however, lay hidden in a concrete foundation in Toowoomba’s heritagelisted Queen’s Park for 49 years. During renovations in 2016, as Chad Parker jackhammered through a poured concrete foundation, a glass bottle toppled out completely unscathed.
Inside was a lighthearted message: ‘This bottle was laid to rest on this 19th day of May 1967 By the Rt. Hon. Tod Trowel + Assisted By Very Excellent Bul Bolster. Plans were drawn on a match box, which was immediately lost. Finder please observe a days rest in respect, with full pay’.
Happily, Parker found one of the men and they shared a pint. The other signatory had unfortunately passed away. Finally, wrap your head around this: in January 2018, Tonya Illman of Perth was strolling the sand dunes of Western Australia’s beaches, killing time, picking up litter, when she spotted an enchanting old olive-green case gin bottle.
She thought it would look good on her bookshelf. Then she noticed something inside. Only when she got it home and emptied the bottle did she realise it was a piece of paper, rolled up tight and tied with string. A message!
As she gingerly unrolled the fragile, sun-baked scroll, she saw German writing and a date: 1886. The message was 132 years old! Tonya’s find is, by a margin of 24 years, the oldest message in a bottle ever found. It was dropped into the Indian Ocean in 1886 on behalf of the Deutsche Seewarte in Hamburg. The Deutsche Seewarte was one of the first government agencies in the world to use messages in bottles to study ocean currents, so it will be impressive indeed if an older bottle is ever found. But then, Australia has quite a lot of dunes to be searched.
Each message in a bottle that shows up on Australia’s shores – or in its concrete blocks – provides a glimpse into the country’s history; each opens a window onto a different time and place. But the uniting theme behind all of them is simple: a deep human desire to reach out and connect. If you ask me, we need all the chances we can get to connect, both with each other, and with our past.
About the author
Clint Buffington has found more than 80 messages in bottles. He runs the website Message in a Bottle Hunter (messageinabottlehunter.com), where he shares true stories of messages in bottles, as well as history and myths, and helps finders of bottled messages locate and connect with their senders. He lives in Utah, United States, with his wife, Kate.
