The first sign that this was not just an ordinary message in a bottle came when Horst Winkler smashed it open and saw the reward for its safe return to Britain. The sum? One shilling.
He and his wife had actually found the oldest known message in a bottle while walking along a beach on a North Sea island
One hundred and ten years before, George Parker Bidder, president of Plymouth’s Marine Biological Association, had thrown more than 1,000 bottles into the sea — each with messages in English, German and Dutch asking for their return, along with information about where they were found.
The purpose was to map ocean currents. This bottle was sent swirling around the North Sea, undiscovered for more than a century, until it washed up on a beach on the German island of Amrum, west of Denmark. Most of the original bottles were found after a few months.
Mr Horst was walking with his wife Marianne when they spotted the object and saw the words “Break the bottle”. “My husband carefully tried to get the message out of the bottle, but there was no chance, so we had to do as it said,” said Mrs Winkler.
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When the holidaymakers from Düsseldorf read the full message they continued to do what it said and forwarded it and its location on to the scientists in Plymouth, as instructed.
The record for the longest time a bottle has spent undiscovered is 99 years. However, the furthest travelled managed to go a considerably greater distance than from Britain to Denmark. In 2013, a bottle was found washed up on the beach in Perth, Australia, having apparently gone more than 10,000 miles from its starting point in Britain and taking only 17 months to do so.
Even so when Guy Baker, from the Marine Biological Association, received the Winklers’ message he was still shocked. “It was quite a stir when we opened that envelope, as you can imagine,” he said.
It also caused quite a quandary: how should they fulfil their end of the bargain? “We found a shilling, I think on eBay,” said Mr Baker. “We sent it with a letter saying ‘Thank you’.”