Woman Finds the World’s Oldest Message In a Bottle From 1886 

Austrailian woman taking a walk on the  Wedge Island beach during late January, photographer Tonya Illman found a bottle that she thought would look nice on a shelf at her home. Upon closer examination, Illman discovered a note inside. When they come back home and dried out the document, they found very dull writing upon the page. Illman and her husband Kym decided to contact the Maritime Archeology department at the WA Museum to find out the precise details of this note. they spend a lot of time on the research of the document, the Illmans finally learned from where both the bottle and the note originated.

A note, placed in a bottle and thrown overboard on June 12, 1886 was found near Wedge Island, WA [Western Australia] on January 21, 2018. …The note stated the bottle was thrown from the German barque Paula while on a voyage from Cardiff, Wales to Macassar, Dutch East Indies which is now known as Indonesia. This was corroborated by Paula’s original meteorological journal (above left) held by the National Meteorological Service of the Federal Republic of Germany, which contained an entry recording the throwing of a bottle overboard by Captain O. Diekmann on 12 June 1886 at the exact co-ordinates on the note while on a voyage from Cardiff to Macassar.