Messages from the Sea

Messages from the Sea soundscape

BBC Radio Ulster’s Stephen McCauley has created a soundscape inspired by Messages from the Sea. As part of the Soundscapes programme, which combines contemporary classical, electronica, ambient and acoustic music with bespoke field recordings, Stephen put a message in a bottle and threw it into the sea from a beach in north Donegal. His recordings, accompanied by readings from the Messages from the Sea book, make up the soundscape.

You can listen to the soundscape via BBC iPlayer using the link below. The soundscape starts from around 20 minutes in. The programme is available until 2 December 2016.

Soundscapes with Stephen McCauley 02/11/2016 on BBC iPlayer

Earlier, during his afternoon show, Stephen spoke to Messages from the Sea’s Paul Brown. You can listen via the interview via BBC iPlayer, starting around 40 minutes in, and available until 2 December 2016.

Stephen McCauley afternoon show 02/11/2016 on BBC iPlayer

In Dangerous Position

Found 26 October 1881, between Drogheda and Laytown, east coast of Ireland.

Enclosed in a tin case:

Barque S. Vaughan, October 22, 1881: Whoever takes this up, please send the following message to S. Vaughan, Liverpool – Anchored off Laytown; masts cut away; one anchor and one chain gone; in dangerous position; send tug as soon as possible; am afraid will not hold out much longer. A. Dickson, master. Be kind enough to send this off at once, as I am very anxious if she parts the other cable we will have a hard time; could the lifeboat come off and stand by us together, and take us off in case we drive ashore.

An example of a message in a bottle – or, in this case, tin – being used as a practical call for assistance, this message was found four days after it had been sent. Newspapers reported that a trawler with a lifeboat in tow proceeded to help the S. Vaughan, of Windsor, Nova Scotia. A few days later a telegram was sent to the owners to advise that the vessel had been brought ashore, presumably with A Dickson and his crew, although their status was not recorded.

[Edinburgh Evening News, 28 October 1881 and Belfast News-Letter, 4 November 1881]

The Last Voyage of Daniel Collins

In November 1824, 15 months after trapper Hugh Glass endured the grizzly bear attack portrayed in The Revenant, and four years after whaler Owen Chase saw his ship smashed to pieces by the giant beast that inspired Moby Dick, a mariner named Daniel Collins set off on an extraordinary voyage that would become another survival adventure for the ages.

The Last Voyage of Daniel Collins is a feature-length article telling the true story of how a U.S. mariner survived a shipwreck, a pirate attack and an epic journey home.

The article is based on From A Blood-Red Sea: The Last Voyage of Daniel Collins, the new book by Paul Brown, author of Messages from the Sea.

You can read the full article at Medium.

Oh, Such A Gale

Found October 1881, South Ronaldshay, Orkney.

In a bottle:

Barque Minner Watson, N.S. [Nova Scotia], latitude 59 degrees 10 mins, north, longitude four degrees 45 mins, west, October 17th; three days off, fearful weather, leaking very much, never expect to see home or friends again. God bless all.
Our last day. Oh, such a gale and sea. The poor ship is nearly a complete wreck. Heaven have mercy on us.
THOMAS JACKSON

[Edinburgh Evening News, 28 October 1881]

From A Blood-Red Sea

Daniel Collins sailed out of Wiscasset, Maine, for Matanzas, Cuba, in November 1824. It was his first voyage as a merchant seaman, and it would also be his last. His ship, the Betsey, was wrecked in a terrible storm, and Collins and his crewmates were left adrift in a leaking lifeboat, in shark-infested waters, a hundred miles from land.

After a torturous few days with no water or provisions, they reached a remote island, where they were brutally attacked by a savage band of pirates. Collins was horribly injured, but he escaped, alone, through water “colored with blood”. Then, with astonishing courage and determination, Collins began an epic journey across land and sea in a desperate effort to escape from the pirates, to reach civilization, and to find a way home.

From A Blood-Red Sea: The Last Voyage of Daniel Collins is the new book by Paul Brown, author of Messages from the Sea. A non-fiction historical survival adventure, it’s recommended for fans of The Revenant and In the Heart of the Sea. It’s available as an Amazon Kindle eBook, a 99p / 99c “Single Shot” (longer than a magazine article, shorter than a full-length book, 12,000 words = approx. 70 mins reading time).

Get book: Amazon UK Amazon US Worldwide

Lifeboat No. 2

Found August 1886, off Howth, near Dublin

In a soda water bottle, written on scraps of an envelope:

July 21st, 1886, Britannia, Liverpool, Captain Dawson, sinking fast, heavy sea from Rio [de] Janeiro, passenger lost, pray for us, lifeboat No. 2.
Left June 28, frightful weather, sinking.

The background to this message is unclear. There was a Cunard ocean liner named Britannia, but this had been sunk in 1880 after being sold by Cunard to the German Navy. A White Star liner named Britannic [sic] was involved in a major collision during fog in 1887, and 12 passengers were lost, although the ship survived. And the Pacific Steam Navigation Company’s Britannia grounded in Rio de Janiero in 1895. None of these vessels would seem to be Dawson’s Britannia.

[Cardiff Times, 7 August 1886]

Down to Plimsoll’s Mark

Found 12 January 1877, on the shore at Occumster, Caithness

In a bottle:

My Dear Wife and Son.
We are laid-to in the North Sea, about one hundred miles westward of the Holman, with our main hatch stove in and gangways gone. The sea is fearful; it is washing in and out of the main hatchway, and washing the linseed out of the hold. It happened at four a.m. this morning. My dear, we have the boat swung out all ready for lowering, but we dare not for the sea. There is no water in the after hold, and the engine is going ahead to pump the water out, but I am afraid it is to no purpose. I don’t think we shall live the night out. Pray to God to forgive us our sins, for we have many. My dear wife and son, it is a painful thing to write to you both and say that I expect every moment to be my last. The ship was too deep—down to Plimsoll’s mark. Ships ought not to be allowed to load so deep. Good day, and God bless you all; and I hope He will protect you. Tell John to be a good boy, and keep honest and sober.
Your affectionate husband JOHN COOK, Chief Mate S.S. Wells, of Hull, 130 Day Street, Hull.
P.S. Kind love to all.

The Wells left the Baltic Sea port of Memel (now Klaipeda) for its home port of Hull on 17 December 1876. When it did not arrive, “the gravest fears” were entertained for the ship and its crew of 22 men. This message confirmed those fears.

After it was published in newspapers, the ship’s owners sought to assure the public that the Wells had not been overloaded, and had in fact been carrying less cargo than usual since the addition of its Plimsoll Line. The message, they said, could not have drifted to its finding place, and must therefore be a hoax.

However, wrapped around the cork of the message’s bottle was found a small piece of newspaper torn from the Newcastle Journal in Newcastle upon Tyne, from the edition dated 29 November 1876 – the date the Wells had sailed out of the Tyne. This was regarded as “rather curious confirmation” that the message was genuine, and that the Wells was indeed lost.

[Shields Gazette 4 January 1877, Middlesbrough Gazette 24 February 1877]

You can read more about the Wells and the Plimsoll Line in the Messages from the Sea book.

The Life-and-Death History of the Message in a Bottle

One Thursday morning in late June 1899, an 11-year-old boy named William Andrews was playing on the beach at Ilfracombe in Devon, England. There he spotted a small tin floating in the water. The quarter-pound tin was marked “coffee and chicory”, and was tied up with a piece of cork for buoyancy. Inside the tin was a note, written in pencil on a page torn from a pocket diary. The note was signed by able seaman R Neel and addressed to Mrs Abigail Neel in Cardiff, Wales. It read as follows:

“To my wife and children. The Stella is going down as I pen my last words. If I do not survive, go to my brother. Goodbye, my loved ones, goodbye.”

This was just one of hundreds of messages in bottles, boxes and tins washed up from the sea onto British and other shores in 1899, and one of thousands found during the busy Victorian and Edwardian steam and sail seafaring eras. These messages from the sea told tales of foundering ships, missing ocean liners and shipwrecked sailors, and contained moving farewells, romantic declarations and intriguing confessions. Some solved mysteries of lost vessels and crews, while others created new mysteries yet to be solved. Read More…

Read the full 2,000-word article at Medium

A Heavy Sea Struck

Found November 1875, near Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

In a bottle:

Dorothy Jobson, October 21st, 1870 — Dear Father — At four p.m., midway between Fifeness and Buchanness, trying to keep her off the shore, a heavy sea struck the vessel, carrying away mainmast and wheel, and washing master and mate overboard. The remainder of us got the boat out in the forenoon, but she swamped. We made a raft, but the painter carried away. About two p.m., a schooner hove in sight and answered our signals for assistance, but offered no assistance. It is half-past four p.m. now, and we expect to down in another hour. John Ross, Robert Hope, William Kingston, join me in bidding farewell to our parents and friends. So, therefore, good-bye dear father, and may God prosper you. Charles Charlton, Felix Symon, send their farewell to all friends. Any one who picks this up will do our friends great favour if he sends it to Mr. W. C. Bergen, 5, Eldon-street, Blyth, Northumberland. I am your loving son, W. C. Bergen.

The Dorothy Jobson, of North Shields, was wrecked off Stonehaven during a storm, and sank with all seven crew. 21-year-old able seaman William Bergen Jr. was the son of the author of the nautical work Bergen On Navigation. The boat’s stern and medicine chest washed ashore in the same place as this message. Also found was another message, from the boat’s 20-year-old seaman Felix Simon, who was from French Mauritius and lodging at North Shields: “Je meurs en regrettant ma soeur, Alex Simon, et ma bien aimee, Annie Rowan.”

[Luton Times and Advertiser, 6 November 1875]

Too Heavily Laden

Found 12 February 1866, near Quiberon, Brittany, France

In a bottle:

H.J. Dennis to Jno. Dennis, Esq., at Great Shelford, nr Cambridge. Farewell, father, brothers, sisters, and my little Edith. Ship London, Bay of Biscay, Thursday, 12 o’clock noon. Reason — Ship too heavily laden for its size, and too slight a house over engine room, all washed away from deck. Poop windows stove in — water coming in everywhere. God bless my little orphan. Request to send this, if found, to Great Shelford. Storm, but not too violent for a well-ordered ship.

This was one of six messages contained in three bottles that washed up at the same spot on the French coast. It was found 32 days after the sinking of the SS London, a British steamship that was sailing from Gravesend, England to Melbourne, Australia. The ship left Gravesend on 13 December 1865, carrying at least 239 passengers and crew, and laden with 400 tons of railway iron and coal. As it sailed past Purfleet on the Thames, a seaman on the riverbank was reported to have remarked that this would be its last trip. “She is too low down in the water,” he said. “She’ll never rise to a stiff sea.”

After sheltering from heavy weather at Plymouth, the London crossed the English Channel and headed into the Bay of Biscay. There it was caught in a terrible storm, which led its Captain Martin to order a return to Plymouth. However, huge waves swamped the low-sitting ship, and swept away all but one of its lifeboats. The London sank, stern first, on 11 January 1866, with those on board reported to have sung the hymn Rock of Ages as they went down. Nineteen survivors escaped in the only remaining lifeboat. At least 220 people died, with some reports also including several unregistered stowaways, plus a baby that was born on board. Henry Denis was a widower who left a young daughter, “now entirely an orphan”.

An inquiry found the main cause of the tragedy to be overloading. The loss of the London, and several other vessels, prompted a government commission led by MP Samuel Plimsoll to introduce a mandatory load mark line painted on ships’ hulls to indicate levels of buoyancy and prevent over-loading. The mark is now known as the Plimsoll Line.

[Era, 4 March 1866, Reynold’s Newspaper, 25 March 1866, Newcastle Journal, 13 September 1867]

You can read more about the London and the Plimsoll Line in the Messages from the Sea book.