In 1886, a German captain of the sailing ship Paula threw a gin bottle from the Schiedam jenever distiller Daniël Visser & Zonen overboard for an experimental study. Now, 132 years later, the bottle has been found.
Between 1864 and 1933, more than a thousand bottles are believed to have been thrown overboard by German captains to investigate ocean currents. The form inside the bottle contained the date the bottle was thrown overboard, the coordinates, the name of the ship, its home port and its route. Finders of the bottles were asked to contact the nearest German consulate or maritime observatory in Hamburg.
Of the 662 bottles thrown overboard, only 7 were returned. The last find of a bottle that was part of the experimental research was found on January 1934, 1910 in Denmark. The oldest message in a bottle to date dates back to 108 and was XNUMX years old.
