Criccieth - Messages in Bottles.

Description

People taking a walk along the foreshore sometimes come across bottles containing messages. They are not as common these days but in olden times, during sailing ship days, they were usually thought to contain messages from some poor sailor on a doomed ship on the point of sinking, alone on a raft or desert island; even being attacked by pirates. Actually, the messages covered a variety of topics. Perhaps a young man or woman looking for a sweetheart or announcing their love for each other would throw a bottle in the sea on a romantic moonlit evening. Research ships and institutions would launch hundreds of bottles with messages to contact them as part of research into ocean currents. Sometimes it was curious to see how far the bottle would travel.

Many messages in bottles were cruel hoaxes but still had to be investigated. Before the days of radio, ships were out of communication for many weeks. Many ships sailed from port and disappeared, lost with all hands, or were badly damaged in storms and lost most of their sails; limping in to port many weeks overdue. In July 1907 a schoolmaster from Morfa Bychan found a bottle, the message reading “ May 31 1902 –Lat N 42.3 W, Long W 43.8, barque Ellis P Griffith of Cardiff dismasted; sinking”. About the same time, Richard Williams of Chapel Terrace, Criccieth came across one with the message “T.Harper, I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course.” A bottle washed up between Criccieth and Portmadoc was allegedly from Jack Robson of the USA, “I am aboard the Kernel and the ship is going down fast with everybody on deck. Goodbye all.” This one was thought to be a hoax. In the 1950s, as a publicity campaign, Guiness Brewery arranged for 150,000 specially embossed bottles to be dropped from 30 cargo ships in the Atlantic. The bottles were sealed with a lead capping to protect the small number of documents they contained, the most interesting of these being a colourful certificate from 'the Office of King Neptune'. In addition there was a little booklet recounting the story of Guinness. One of these bottles was found on the Heraig shingle bank between Criccieth and Black Rock by two boys in 1959. They wrote to the brewery and received some publicity material and a
glass paperwight with a map of the Atlantic showing where the bottle had been launched.

Another type of message in a bottle is the “Time Capsule” containing a message and memoribilia buried, or even sent by rocket into outer space, to commemorate special occasions. In 1922 Prime Minister David Lloyd George placed one behind the foundation stone of the Memorial Hall in Criccieth. The bottle contained a local newspaper, silver coins, list of subscribers to the building of the Hall and a message.