The message inside the bottle has two sides: a handwritten note and a printed side. There is so much to research, so I’m breaking it down into parts, and we are starting with the handwritten note and Yacht Neptune. Research began on newspapers.com, which is seriously the most fun site I’ve been on in a while, and it’s not just because I’m on the approach to 50. You can put anyone’s name in there, and articles about them will appear. I even had a quote from when I was in college in a South Jersey newspaper. I have zero recollection of this experience, so it was pretty thrilling to uncover. Newspapers.com also revealed that my Grandmother’s brother was a criminal. A less thrilling discovery. Back to Yacht Neptune. The article below further confirms that this message in a bottle is legit. But more importantly, it introduced me to Captain Samuel Gale.
Note above reads: Yacht Neptune Aug 6 -76 off Atlantic City NJ
So far, I’ve found two articles published before the message in the bottle was written. In addition to building a boat, Captain Samuel appears to have assisted two skinny English guys in swimming across “the Inlet” in 1873. I also believe I’ve unearthed the last person to use the word “man-fish.”
Here’s the full article below. The word “man-fish” is used multiple times. Keep scrolling there’s one more article.
So here we are in 1884 with two ads and what looks like two brothers giving sailing lessons again in “the Inlet.” “The Inlet” was also mentioned in the previous article, so I set out to find out where it was in Atlantic City. It turns out today it’s called the Absecon Inlet. So now we know where Yacht Neptune was sailing and how far away that is from where I found the bottle.
For those unfamiliar with NJ, here’s the map showing Atlantic City on the coastline of South Jersey. Here’s “the Inlet,” aka Absecon Inlet, where we now know the “man-fish” was swimming. You can also see where it is in relation to Atlantic City. And finally, the distance from where Yacht Neptune potentially dropped the bottle in the ocean to where I found it on the beach roughly 22 miles away and 148 years later. Ok, I’m gonna look up more stuff and be back soon.
