A greetings card designer stumbled upon what is believed to be the world’s oldest message in a bottle while walking along the Jersey Shore.
Amy Smyth Murphy, 49, was strolling along a beach at Corson’s State Inlet in Ocean City when she spotted an unusual looking bottle at the water’s edge.
‘I just thought, “This is so peculiar. What is this?”’ Smyth Murphy told the Philadelphia Inquirer.
After some research, she managed to determine that the message in a bottle likely dates back as far as 1876 – which would make it the oldest artefact of its kind.
Most intriguing was a barely legible, handwritten note found inside the bottle which reads: ‘Yacht Neptune off Atlantic City, New Jersey. Aug. 6 – 76.’
Based on her research, Smyth Murphy now believes the ’76’ is a reference to the year 1876, when the note is thought to have been written.
‘It took us I would say maybe 48 hours to really understand what it said, but if you stare at it long enough, you can kind of start to see it,’ Smyth Murphy explained.
She began her inquiries by looking at the bottle itself, which bears the branding Barr & Brother Philadelphia.
According to valuation site Worthpoint, the company likely produced the glassware between 1870 and 1900.
The next task was to carefully pluck out the note which was scrolled up inside the bottle, which her niece did using a corkscrew and some tweezers.
Inside, Smyth Murphy found a business card for a well known Philadelphia instrument company called W.G. & J Klemm dating to the 1800s.
On the back was the handwritten note, referencing Yacht Neptune.
‘I would love to find who was sailing on the ship, who was the captain, where was it going? Was it for pleasure? Was it business? All those types of questions,’ Smyth Murphy said.
She uncovered a Philadelphia Inquirer article from 1874 which names Captain Samuel Gale of Atlantic City who had ‘just built a splendid yacht, which he christened “Neptune,” after the Neptune Club of this city.’
Neptune was a popular pleasure cruise which drew scores of daytrippers thanks to Gale’s charismatic persona, according to his obituary.
‘We are getting closer to finding out who wrote the note and who threw the bottle in the ocean,’ Smyth Murphy said in a TikTok.
But the puzzle is not over for her yet and Smyth Murphy has contacted the Guinness Book of World Records to try and verify her theory.
According to the organization, the current record for the oldest message in a bottle dates back to June 12, 1886 and was set adrift by German captains aboard the Barque Paula and found at Wedge Island, in 2018.
‘From the reactions so far that I’ve had, everyone really likes the mystery of it,’ Smyth Murphy said.
‘Let’s see how much info we can get out of this one bottle and the history of it and how it connects to Philadelphia and South Jersey.’