Bottled up

In August of last year, Scottish skipper Andrew Leaper found what was then the oldest message in a bottle. He picked it out of his fishing net before it fell back into the sea, and remembers, "It was very exciting to find the bottle and I couldn't wait to open it." It turned out to be a drift bottle released in 1914 by the Glasgow School of Navigation to help map the ocean currents. Just this month, that 98-year-old record-holder has been eclipsed by a 107-year-old bottle. Battered but still sealed, it was found by beachcomber Steve Thurber on the shore of Schooner’s Cove in Tofino, Canada. From what can be seen through the glass (IMAGE HERE), the bottle was dropped over the side of a steamer sailing from San Francisco to Bellingham, Washington, by a passenger named Earl Willard, who dated his handwritten message September 29, 1906. "This is the oldest message in a bottle that I've ever heard of. The odds of finding it are astronomical," comments Lynette Miller, head of collections at the Washington State Historical Society. She explains that the bottle is Thurber's to do with what he wishes – and so far that is to decline to open it…

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