109 years on: bottle mail set for delivery
This interesting piece out of Australia.
Beachcombers along Wharton Beach, southeast of Perth, came across an old bottle. Sealed, it contained two yellowed and deteriorating pencil-written letters.
Carefully retrieved, they were addressed from “somewhere at sea” and detailed an outward-bound leg on the troopship HMAT Ballarat, which departed Adelaide in August 1916, bound for the Great War in Europe.
It turned out they belonged to ANZAC privates Malcolm Alexander Neville (48th Australian Infantry Battalion) and William Kirk Harley (4th Australian Light Horse).
Sadly, Neville would be killed months later in France and remains there with a white cross over his grave. Harley survived and returned home, but passed having never seen his letter again.
The families have been found and are finally set to receive their long-lost sea mail.
The beachcombers are keeping the bottle, though.