Author: Paul

Messages from the Sea book out now

Now available, the Messages from the Sea book book collects historic messages in bottles found around the world, and presents them with notes and illustrations. It contains 100 messages – some are favourites from the website, but the majority are new for the book. The book also includes an introductory history of the message in a bottle.

The book is available directly from us and from Amazon stores worldwide, in paperback, hardback, and as a Kindle eBook. The paperback and hardback editions contain 200 pages and more than 40 illustrations. The eBook contains all of the text plus selected illustrations. You can get the book by clicking the buttons below:

Get book: Amazon UK Amazon US Worldwide

Messages from the Sea
Letters and Notes from a Lost Era Found in Bottles and on Beaches Around the World
Compiled by Paul Brown, Published by Superelastic

“The lost and found language of Messages from the Sea in book form. Superb!” – Ian McMillan

Messages from the Sea is a collection of letters and notes found washed ashore on beaches and bobbing in water, in corked bottles and wax-sealed boxes, carved onto wreckage and in the bellies of sharks. They tell of foundering ships, missing ocean liners and shipwrecked sailors, and contain moving farewells, romantic declarations and intriguing confessions. Some solve the mysteries of lost vessels and crews, while others create new mysteries yet to be solved. Dating from a lost era of seafaring, they demonstrate the brave, lonely and fragile nature of life on the ocean waves.

Included among the 100 messages in the book are: a clue to the fate of the missing White Star liner Naronic; a murder confession found in a bottle off the White Cliffs of Dover; an update from John Franklin’s lost Arctic expedition; a poem about a newborn baby found inside an 11ft shark; an unlikely apology from fleeing fraudster Violet Charlesworth; evidence for the unnecessary loss of the steamship London with 220 souls; the truth behind the mysterious grave robbery of the Earl of Crawford; and a message from the deck of the sinking Titanic.

The messages date from the late-19th and early-20th centuries, an era before ship-to-shore radio, when a vessel lost contact with the world once it disappeared over the horizon. For many seafarers, the message in a bottle was a vital and valuable form of communication. Found messages were published in national and local newspapers around the world, often in columns titled Messages from the Sea.

messages_front

messages back

Messages from the Sea
Letters and Notes from a Lost Era Found in Bottles and on Beaches Around the World
Compiled by Paul Brown
Published by Superelastic, 19 September 2016
Hardback, ISBN 9780995541207
Paperback, ISBN 9780995541214
Also available as an eBook

Get book: Amazon UK Amazon US Worldwide

Media information
Trade information
Contact us

Unbelievable true stories of messages in bottles brought to life in book – Sunday Express
Real-life ‘messages in a bottle’ from a very different age – Newcastle Chronicle
Book reveals man’s last message to his wife and children before he was lost at sea – Sunderland Echo
Messages washed up on Scottish islands feature in new book – Island News & Advertiser

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God Help Us

Found December 1898, on the beach at Troon, South Ayrshire

In a bottle, a note scribbled in pencil:

Schooner Lizzie foundering off Corsewall Point. God help us.

Corsewall Point is 40 miles south of Troon on the west coast of Scotland. No Scottish vessel named Lizzie was known to be missing, and the message was initially assumed to be a hoax. However, it was subsequently revealed to be the last dispatch from a Northern Irish vessel, from Kircubbin, County Down, across the North Channel.

The Lizzie left Maryport, Cumbria, on 22 November 1898, and was due in Kircubbin on the following day. However, it was caught in a severe gale, and was last seen heading north, apparently to seek shelter from the storm. A week later, a life-boat bearing the Lizzie’s name was washed ashore near Larne, County Antrim, around 25 miles from Corsewall Point. “No doubts are now held that the vessel foundered in the heavy gale, which, it will be remembered, caused a lot of damage to shipping at the time,” reported the Glasgow Herald.

The Lizzie had a crew of four hands, led by Captain McWhirr, who left a widow and eight children, “most of whom are young”.

[Glasgow Herald, 9 December 1898]

In the Hands of Savages

Found November 1877, on the shore at Luce Bay, Wigtownshire

In a bottle, written in pencil on a piece of paper, the writing very much faded:

On the 29th April, 1876, the ship Herclades was wrecked on the extremity of Patagonia. Crew in the hands of savages. Bring us assistance, my God. Latitude 24, longitude 21. [indistinct] Sighted a vessel.

Wigtownshire is in south west Scotland, more than 7,000 miles from the South American region of Patagonia.

[Edinburgh Evening News, 3 November 1877]

All Hands Will Perish

Found February 1879, on the sands at Craster, Northumberland

In a bottle:

The Mary Jane, of Dover, bound from Glasgow for New Zealand, was wrecked 300 miles off the coast of England. It is supposed all hands will perish. There is a heavy sea, and crew in small open boats.
T. SNAITH, captain.

The Berwickshire News and General Advertiser said this message stated the Mary Jane “was wrecked 300 miles off the coast of New Zealand”, not England, and therefore concluded it must be a hoax as it could not have drifted such a distance. But this seems to have been based on a transcription error, as in the first publications of the message, in the Sunderland Echo and Shields Gazette a week earlier, the ship “was wrecked 300 miles off the coast of England”, and there was no suspicion of a hoax.

[Sunderland Echo and Shields Gazette, 18 February 1879, Berwickshire News and General Advertiser, 25 February 1879]

Sole Survivors

Found September 1903, on the beach at Fukave Island, Tonga

In a tightly-corked wine bottle:

Will the finder of this inform Messrs. Barkfoot & Co. of Port Said that their schooner, Ethel, foundered about 1,000 miles from Bombay? This note is written by the sole survivors, Capt. Lee and Seaman Thomas, who are in their last hopes.
Signed, J. T. Lee, Jan. 26 or 27, 1897.

The message was forwarded to the New Zealand Herald by a Captain Lombard of Tongatabu, and published without comment. Several months later, it was published in several US newspapers, with the added detail that the British schooner Ethel had disappeared while on route from Bombay to its home port of Port Said, Egypt. However, no reference to the Ethel, nor Barkfoot & Co, appeared in British newspapers.

[New Zealand Herald, 28 September 1903]

Music from the Sea

Composer Clive Whitburn has written and recorded four pieces of music for soprano, baritone, harp and piano, based on Messages from the Sea.

The messages featured are Look after my boy (Thompson’s message), The body in a well (Charles Pilcher), Miss Charlesworth’s compliments (Miss Charlesworth Presents), and A pretty little boy (All is well).

The recordings feature soprano Laura Wolk-Lewanowicz, baritone Alex Roose, harpist Alexandra King and pianist Adam Swayne. You can listen to all four pieces below:

All four letters on which the music is based are included in the Messages from the Sea book.

Messages from the Sea book

The Messages from the Sea book is a beautifully presented collection of some of our favourite letters and notes found floating in bottles and washed up on beaches across the world. Initially available via this website as a special limited edition, the standard edition of the book was published on 19 September 2016, and is now available in bookstores.

The book contains 100 messages, including some website favourites and many previously unseen book exclusives, with accompanying notes and illustrations. Also included is an introductory history of the message in a bottle.

Get book: Amazon UK Amazon US Worldwide

Messages from the Sea
Letters and Notes from a Lost Era Found in Bottles and on Beaches Around the World
Compiled by Paul Brown, Published by Superelastic

“The lost and found language of Messages from the Sea in book form. Superb!” – Ian McMillan

Messages from the Sea is a collection of letters and notes found washed ashore on beaches and bobbing in water, in corked bottles and wax-sealed boxes, carved onto wreckage and in the bellies of sharks. They tell of foundering ships, missing ocean liners and shipwrecked sailors, and contain moving farewells, romantic declarations and intriguing confessions. Some solve the mysteries of lost vessels and crews, while others create new mysteries yet to be solved. Dating from a lost era of seafaring, they demonstrate the brave, lonely and fragile nature of life on the ocean waves.

Included among the 100 messages in the book are: a clue to the fate of the missing White Star liner Naronic; a murder confession found in a bottle off the White Cliffs of Dover; an update from John Franklin’s lost Arctic expedition; a poem about a newborn baby found inside an 11ft shark; an unlikely apology from fleeing fraudster Violet Charlesworth; evidence for the unnecessary loss of the steamship London with 220 souls; the truth behind the mysterious grave robbery of the Earl of Crawford; and a message from the deck of the sinking Titanic.

The messages date from the late-19th and early-20th centuries, an era before ship-to-shore radio, when a vessel lost contact with the world once it disappeared over the horizon. For many seafarers, the message in a bottle was a vital and valuable form of communication. Found messages were published in national and local newspapers around the world, often in columns titled Messages from the Sea.

messages_front

messages back

Messages from the Sea
Letters and Notes from a Lost Era Found in Bottles and on Beaches Around the World
Compiled by Paul Brown
Published by Superelastic, 19 September 2016
Hardback, ISBN 9780995541207
Paperback, ISBN 9780995541214
Also available as an eBook

Get book: Amazon UK Amazon US Worldwide

Media information
Trade information
Contact us

Unbelievable true stories of messages in bottles brought to life in book – Sunday Express
Real-life ‘messages in a bottle’ from a very different age – Newcastle Chronicle
Book reveals man’s last message to his wife and children before he was lost at sea – Sunderland Echo
Messages washed up on Scottish islands feature in new book – Island News & Advertiser

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Special thanks to everyone who has supported and encouraged Messages from the Sea over the past few months. This book would not have been possible without you. We hope you enjoy it.

Note: The limited edition is sold out, but the standard edition was published on 19 September 2016.

The Secret of Her Birth

Found February 1869, Cullenstown, County Wexford, Ireland.

In a bottle, on soiled, torn paper with no date:

The finder of this is to tell Elizabeth Granton, of Ashton Grange, on the borders of London, E.C., that the secret of her birth will be found behind the picture of the Earl of Warwick, in the drawing-room, and receive the blessing of a dying man.

Interest in this message was, according to the Belfast News-Letter, “awakened by the fact that there is a lady in the case, and that it has a romantic air about it.” The abbreviation “E.C.” suggests London’s East Central postcode area, from an era before postcodes had numbers added to them. However, Ashton Grange cannot be found in Victorian London gazetteers.

[Belfast News-Letter, 4 February 1869 and Lincolnshire Chronicle, 19 February 1869]

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