The message in the bottle

The message in the bottle was an old and mysterious story of the sea. Few fictitious messages have had such a strange origin and such a dramatic effect as the real message picked up by one of the crew of the Araguary in the South Atlantic on May 4, 1882. The Brazilian gunboat Araguary was patrolling near the mouth of the Amazon River when the team saw a sealed bottle with a card inside, floating on the surface. Stopping to retrieve the bottle, she passed it to the Captain. The letter was undated. He said:

Aboard the schooner Sea Hero. The crew mutinied, killing the captain and throwing the first mate overboard. I am the second officer and have been saved to sail the ship. They are forcing me to go to the Amazon River. 28 long 22 lat making 3.5 knots. Urgent help.

When he read the message, the captain of the Araguary checked his log and found details about the ship being built in 1866 and having sailed from Hull in England. He decided to investigate and ordered his gunship to the rescue as they were not far from that last known position.

Several hours later, when they reached the indicated position, a ship was sighted. Sure enough, it was the Sea Hero. The Brazilian gunboat fired a warning shot across the prow of the mutinous ship to divert it. The Araguary managed to get alongside the Sea Hero and a boarding party passed through and after a savage fight the cutlass-wielding Brazilians overpowered and arrested the mutineers. The Brazilians soon found and freed the crewmen who had remained loyal. And then the rescuers told them about the message in the discovery of the bottle.

Here is the most mysterious and strange part of this incident. Gathering around, they began to discuss the story. Although the second officer named Hudger was naturally pleased to be rescued, he was perplexed and could not understand how the gunship captain knew about the mutiny. The captain explained the finding of the floating bottle with the request for help inside. But surprisingly, the second officer denied sending such a message. As for the rest of the English crew, they also denied having sent it.

And the shocking truth was not finally discovered until the Sea Hero finally arrived in London. At the court hearing the mystery deepened. It was later learned that the Hand of Fate had dealt harshly with the mutineers. They would have succeeded in their crime had it not been for the note in that bottle, a note that had been written sixteen years earlier! The truth was that an author, John Parminton, had written a book called Sea Hero. To get wider publicity for his book, the author had thrown 5,000 empty whiskey bottles into the sea, each containing exactly the same passage from his book. The mutinous ship, the Sea Hero, is named after that book. It was one of these bottles that the Araguary had picked up, strangely in the same place. The message that foiled the mutiny had been written long before the actual Sea Hero ship was built!

The article above was taken from his book Seas of Fate.