Message in a Bottle

The song by the Police, Message in a Bottle is something I like a lot, but hadn’t really thought much about it. Upon reflection, the stranded castaway is lonely, isolated and desperate for some human connection. At the end of the song he sees “a hundred million bottles washed upon the shore.” That line indicates that many others are alone and that turns the song from despair to hope.

But why is there something about a message in a bottle? There are many examples that the May New Yorker issue had about the "romantic" aspects of sending a message with an address and money for postage in the hope of having it found. The best story is a Swedish sailor wrote in 1955 “To someone beautiful and far away. Write to me whoever you are.” He included a picture and his address. The bottle washed up in Sicily and was found by the father of a fifteen year old girl. Three years later the two got married and they were together over forty years.  

What was interesting about the story was not the history of Vikings throwing things overboard or the 12th century Japanese epic about a poet who threw a thousand verses into the sea hoping they would reach his parents. But a young fledgling writer published “MS. Found in a Bottle” and that kicked off the modern era, in 1833, of people putting messages in bottles. His story attempted to tell about a fateful voyage, and the passenger wanted the story to be told. 

That Baltimore writer was Edgar Allan Poe.