A North Sea message in a bottle tossed into the water 108 years ago finally reached land – an island off Germany – and now has been confirmed as the oldest message in a bottle ever found, according to
Guinness World Records.
The bottle was one of more than 1,000 tossed into the North Sea by Britain's George Parker Bidder, of the Marine Biological Association, as part of his research on the pattern of sea currents, according to
The Guardian.
After 108 years and 138 days, Marianne Winkler found the bottle on Amrum island and was rewarded one shilling, which was what the message promised the person finding it, said Guinness. The bottle contained a postcard asking the finder to return it to the Marine Biological Association.
"We found an old shilling, I think we got it on eBay," Guy Baker, the communication officer for the Marine Biological Association, told The Guardian. "We sent it to her with a letter saying thank you."
The Guardian said, though, that Winkler also gets credit from Guinness World Records for finding the bottle, beating out the old record of a bottled message found in 2013 in the Shetland Islands after 99 years and 43 days at sea.
The Daily Mail said Bidder, who served as president of the association from 1939 to 1945, used the messages-bottles dump to prove for the first time that deep sea current flowed from the east to the west in the North Sea.
The messages in the bottles were written in English, German, and Dutch.
"It's always a joy when someone finds a message in a bottle on the beach," Winkler said of the discovery. "Where does it come from, who wrote it, and how long has it been travelling on the winds, waves and currents."