MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

Pacific Daily News

It's happened before.  As far back as 1884.

The main ocean currents in the north Pacific, at least as far as they affect the Marianas, go from west to east; from California, past Hawaii to the Marianas.

Here, take a look :

So when people on the West Coast of the U.S. throw messages in bottles into the sea, it isn't surprising that some end up in the Marianas.

What is surprising is how long people have been doing it!

The earliest attestation I have found happened in 1884. That bottle was thrown into the sea from the steamer the Columbia in 1882. Two years later, it washed up on Saipan.

In January of 1898, one Clement Wragge, aboard the Zealandia, travelling from San Francisco to Australia, threw his message in a bottle into the sea.

On June 21st of that same year, on Guam, a Chamorro man walking along the shoreline at Ylig Bay, happened to notice a bottle with a piece of paper inside. His name was Rafael de Leon Guerrero. He turned it into authorities in Hagåtña. A sea captain, Captain Turner, who obviously spoke English, revealed that it was from a man named Wragge and the story was sent to newspapers here and there.

Source : The Independent (Honolulu), September 16, 1898