Notes From the Sea

4

Part I

In 1956 a young sailor at sea was very far from his family and friends for the first time in his life. He wrote a note and put it into a bottle. Then he sealed the bottle and threw it into the sea. In his note he asked any nice girl who found it to write to him. After some time a farmer in Italy, who lived by the sea, saw the sailor’s bottle and picked it up. He gave the note to his daughter and she wrote the sailor a letter. Some more letters traveled to Italy and back. Soon the sailor visited Italy. In 1958 he married the girl.

This is one of many stories about bottles, which drift from place to place in the seas and oceans. A sealed bottle is a good traveler at sea. It can travel through storms which break ships to pieces. A sealed bottle lies on the water and does not go down. A bottle drifts as quickly as the wind blows and the current moves. A drifting bottle may not move a mile in a month or may move 100 miles in a day. But nobody can tell where a bottle will go.

Two bottles began to travel at the same time in the ocean near Brazil. The first bottle drifted for one hundred and thirty days. People found it on a shore in Africa. The second bottle drifted for one hundred and ninety-six days and people found it in Nicaragua, in America.

Two other bottles began to drift in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. They drifted three hundred and fifty days and people found them in France only a few meters from each other.

Part II

One bottle traveled a very long distance. In 1929 it began to drift in the Indian Ocean. There was a note in it which people could read through the glass. The note asked the man who found the bottle to report when and where he picked it up. It said not to open the bottle and to put it back into the sea. This bottle went to America. A man found it, reported and threw it back into the sea. Other men found the bottle, reported and threw it back. The bottle drifted into the Atlantic Ocean, then went back to the Indian Ocean again. In 1935 the bottle was in Australia. It traveled two thousand four hundred and forty seven days and made about ten kilometers each day.

Scientists use drifting bottles when they want to study the currents in the ocean. This is important for navigation on the seas and oceans.

In 1944 some boys, who were on the shore in America, found a bottle with a note in it. The note said: “Our ship is going down. This is the end. This note may get to America some day.” The note came from an American ship which went down near Gibraltar in 1943 and many people were drowned.

In 1953 people found a bottle in Tasmania with a note from two Australian soldiers. They were on a ship that was on the way to France in World War I. The soldiers died in that war. Their friends received the letter 35 years after the end of that war.