Found 3 March 1874, Staten Island, New York.
In a corked bottle:
Le vaisseau Trois Frères, de Calais, France, fut naufrage, Mars 3me, 1874, lat. 49 45, lon. 23.54. VICTOR VANDEBROUCQUE.
The ship Three Brothers, of Calais, France, was wrecked, March 3rd, 1874 lat. 49 45, lon. 23.54. VICTOR VANDEBROUCQUE.
The Trois Freres was described as a French sailing ship, with no further details provided.
[New York Times, 2 August 1874]
Found 6 September 1885, Charlevoix, Michigan.
In a corked bottle:
July 25, 1885. Collided. The schooner Hattie Fisher went down off Point Betsy [sic]. The crew is in the boat this night. Don’t expect to get ashore.
The Hattie Fisher, from Beaver Island, Lake Michigan, was owned by the island’s priest Father Peter Gallagher, and sailed by John E Bonner. Point Betsie is a lighthouse station on the northeast shore of the lake. After this message was found, inquiries among other Beaver Island sailors found that the ship had not been seen or heard from for some time.
[New York Times, 7 September 1885]
Found 28 July 1883, Matagorda, Texas.
In a bottle on the beach:
The finder will report this. We are now in a sinking condition, with all our boats washed away and the pumps all stopped up. We are off Cuba. Lost three men overboard. We have no fresh water. On board of the ship Cape of Good Hope. Feb. 22. JOHN JOHNSON, Mate.
Matagorda is some 1,200 miles across the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba.
[New York Times, 29 July 1883]
Found 6 August 1883, Sea Isle City, New Jersey.
In a bottle, picked up on the beach next to life-saving station 34:
Off Jersey coast. Lost at sea June 21, 1883, bark Atlanta, bound from Genoa to New-York. Have been without food for three days. Send us help or we are lost. Have buried Captain, mate, boatswain, and all but three sailors. Help us or we perish.
In July 1883 the US Board of Health reported three cases of yellow fever aboard a bark named Atlanta, which arrived at New Orleans (not New York) from Genoa after a journey of 97 days. The mate had died, and other crew-members had “dissipated”. The ship had not visited any ports known to carry yellow fever. A few weeks later, Dr Holt, the president of the Board of Health, stated his opinion that “it was alcoholism, not yellow fever, from which the mate died and the others were made sick”.
[New York Times, 7 August, 1883]
Found July 1912, off Block Island, Rhode Island.
In a bottle, on a wireless blank bearing the Titanic imprint:
April 16 — Mid ocean — help — on a raft — Titanic sinking — no water or food — Major Butt.
The sailors who found this message initially regarded it as a “ghastly joke”, but the fact that it was written on RMS Titanic stationery brought them to believe it was authentic. Archibald Butt was a well-known US Army officer, and a military aide to US president William Taft. He had boarded the White Star liner in Southampton, and was returning home after six weeks in Europe. The Titanic was sunk after colliding with an iceberg just before midnight on 14 April 1912. There are various accounts describing Butt’s bravery in organising the lifeboats as the ship went down. Butt was one of the 1,521 passengers and crew who lost their lives. His body was never recovered. The date on his message suggests he had been adrift on a raft for more than a day.
In October 1912, a bottle was found in a fjord on the west coast of Iceland containing the message: “I am one of them that were wrecked on the Titanic. — Harry Wilson.” There was no Harry Wilson on the Titanic’s passenger or crew lists, although there was an Algernon Henry Wilson Barkworth, and also a Helen Wilson — both of whom survived.
A third message purporting to be from the Titanic was allegedly found in the summer of 1913, at Dunkettle, near Cork in Ireland. The message read: “From Titanic. Good Bye all. Burke of Glanmire.” 19-year-old Jeremiah Burke died on the Titanic, along with his cousin, Nora. His mother had given him a small bottle of holy water to take with him. The message washed up in that bottle just a mile from his home village of Glanmire. It was speculated that Jeremiah could have thrown the bottle overboard while still in the Irish Sea, intending it to be a simple farewell to Ireland, with no knowledge of the disaster to come.
[Chicago Day Book, 31 July 1912 and The Scotsman, 12 October 1912, BBC News website, 26 October 2011]
Found 30 August 1868, San Buenaventura Beach, California.
In a water-tight bottle, written in the margins of a printed form, much mutilated:
[Printed text, in five languages:]
WHOEVER finds this paper is requested to forward it to the Secretary of the Admiralty, London, with a note of the time and place at which it was found; or, if more convenient, to deliver it for that purpose to the British Consul at the nearest Port.
[Written text:]
HMS Erebus and Terror. 28 of May 1847. Having wintered in 1846-47 at Beechey Island in Lat. 74* 43’ 23” N. Long. 91* 39’ 15” W. After having ascended Wellington Channel to Lat 77* and returned by the West side of Cornwallis Island. Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition. All well.
[Written at foot:]
Party consisting of 2 officers and 6 men left the ships on Monday, 24th May, 1847. G. M. GORE, Lieut. CHAS. F. DesVOUX, Mate.
[Written in margins:]
1848. H. M. ships Terror and Erebus were deserted on the 22nd April, five leagues N. N. W. of this, having been beset since Sept. 12, 1846. The officers and crews, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain F. R. M. CROZIER, landed here – in lat. 69* 37’ 24”, lon. 98* 4’ 15”. A paper was found by Lieutenant IRVING under the cairn supposed to have been built by Sir JAMES ROSS in 1831, four miles to the northward, where it had been deposited by the late Commander GORE in June, 1847. Sir JAMES ROSS’ pillar has not, however, been found, and the paper has been transferred to this position, which is that in which Sir J. ROSS’s pillar was erected. Sir JOHN FRANKLIN died on the 11th of June, 1847, and the total loss by deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men. JAMES FITZJAMES, Captain H. M. S. Erebus. F. R. M. CROZIER, Captains and senior officer, and start on tomorrow, 26th, for Back’s Fish River.
Explorer Sir John Franklin’s fourth and final Arctic expedition set sail from Greenhithe, England, on 15 May 1845, with 24 officers and 110 men. Franklin was attempting to navigate the Northwest Passage, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific via the Arctic Ocean. The entire expedition was lost. The last recorded sighting was in late July 1845. The first traces of the expedition were found by search parties in 1850.
Numerous searches took place over the following decades, and the first note was found in 1859. Other Admiralty Forms were found, with duplicated updates scrawled in their margins, on land and at sea. It is thought that, with their ships icebound, the starving men set out onto the ice, where they were driven to cannibalism, before eventually succumbing to the elements.
[New York Times, 17 September 1869]
Found 3 August 1881, Oak Beach, Long Island, New York.
In a bottle:
YACHT MARGARET, July 14, 1881. We were wrecked in a heavy north-east wind off Faulkner’s Island soon after the sloop Commerce left us; two of the crew were washed off while furling the jib topsail. Please send this to my aunt, and address Mrs. W. H. Parsons, Rye, N. Y.
[New York Times, 7 August 1881]
Found 22 March 1892, Dog Island, near Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Picked up by fishing boat captain Samuel Chance, in a moss-grown, long-necked and tightly-corked bottle, hastily scrawled on a piece of wrapping paper, with $15 in paper money:
The finder, whosoever it may be, will use this money as his own. We are sinking. Death stares us in —
“Here the note breaks off, and there is no signature, neither is the name of the vessel given,” reported the New York Times. The bottle appeared to have been in the water for a “very long time”.
[New York Times, 24 March 1892]
Found November 1874, off Key West, Florida.
A slip of paper picked up by fishermen:
The schooner Lucie shipped from the coast of Georgia in August, loaded with lumber, and bound for Rio de Janeiro, (owned by Major Pollard, of St. Louis, and commanded by Capt. Hicks, of Boston) with Henry Mitchell, Mike Conely, John Meninger, and David Clark, of New-York, and four colored men. Was struck by a severe gale on the night of 27th September, some 330 miles off Rio de Janeiro, and had her mainmast and foremast carried away. She dipped and broke her bowsprit, and sprung a leak. All hands went to work to pump her out, and managed to keep her up until about nine o’clock the next morning, when she was dashed against a rock and went down. We made a raft with the boards and put on some provisions but they were washed off during the day. Worn out with fatigue, Capt. Hicks and Mr. Meninger and one colored man got sick. We saw no vessel at all, nor an island near us. The poor sick men died the second day. Mitchell jumped off our little raft, and Conely was washed off. The negroes and myself are still alive, though weak, and the rough waves seem to toss us so I fear we shall not last long.
My dear wife Mary, and little babe live in New-York; may God bless them and take care of them. The Lucie was a 400-ton vessel, with three masts, but she is gone, and some of her gallant men with her, and we who yet live will, I fear, soon follow. I am ready to meet my God.
DAVID CLARK.
The Lucie had loaded with lumber at a sawmill near Brunswick, Georgia.
[Savannah Advertiser, 10 November 1874, and New York Times, 15 November 1874]
Messages from the Sea 