The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-06-10
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STRANGE VOYAGES or BOTTLES
Their Use in Determining the Courses
 nf 0aaor ct,,,,,,,,,,,, +,.

Their Use in Determining the Courses
 of Ocean Currents.
 Every year for several years past hundreds of bottles have been thrown overheard from vessels of all kinds and nationalities with the object of testing the direction and strength Of the countless currents which flow like so many devious rivers through the seas. Before each bottle is dispatched on it's unknown jurney, says Tit-Bits, the skipper, who thus does marine science good service, places in it a
 note of the exact place whence it is despatched, with the date, and also a, printed note in half a dozen languages asking the person who may pick it up to report to the Hydrography Bu- reau at Washington the time where about of it's recovery Thus each mes senger. with it's securely corked con- tents fares forth on it's voyage of ocean survey, and by it's Wonderings maps the currents of the oceans.
 Of two bottles thrown in midocean at the same time one was picked up on the coast of Devonshire, while the lother drifted to far away Florida, each being caught by a different cur rent and drifting thousands of miles away from it's fellow. Tn curious con- trast was the Wanderings of three bot ties thrown overheard from Dago 300 miles east Of Newfoundland and all recovered during the same week with in short distance of each other after drifting 1,200 miles to the Hebrides. | Another bottle was started on it's Journey from the Nautilus, when close l to the Canary Islands Traveiing the great tropical ocean in the trade winds belt, it went coursing along between the islands of the Windward Group,
 across the Caribbean Sea to the coast Iof Belize, almost within the Mexican
 Gulf. For 496 days it thus pursued it's l solitary way, before it was stranded
 and rescued, having covered 4,700 miles at an average speed of nearly ten
 miles day. Even this remarkable re-
 cord of travel was eclipsad by a bot I tie which was thrown up by the sea
 at Shetland few years ago and of
 which a tragic story is told.
 On Oct. Il, 1890, the captain of the Iship Buckingham was murdered by a coolie off the Shetland coast Unable 1 to attract attention from the shore the
 mate proceeded on the voyage to New
 York, where tho murderer WAS given l into custody, and from there to the
 Bermudas, where he wrote an account
 of the trtgeay and committee it to ! the sea. By a most singular eoinci- I S4ssf
 sage was carried by the sea currents back from the Bermudas to Shetland,
 nearly five thousand miles away, and I two and a half years later was res
 cued almost on the very spot where | the murder which it recorded was committed.
 1 For nearly three years another bot ] tie was roaming over the seas before it came to it's rest. On Sept. l 1t was I pitched overboard from the Bremen
 haven several hundred miles east of
 Newfoundland; it was carried into the southern edge of the Gulf Stream.
 drifted away beyond the Azores, then. Icurving to the southeast off the coast ! of Africa, it crossed the Atlantic, eon1- ling to it's haven on the shore of 2 small island in the West Indies, just north of Hayti. It had voyaged, as nearly as could be estimated, 4,50o miles in 994 days, averaging dis tanea of about four and a half miles in twenty-four hours.
 A bottle thrown overfrona the steam
 ship Sutherland on March Il, 1887, drifted 4,000 knots before it was re-5 covered 1S1 days later; another record
 maker was picked tp on March 26, I1s9s, having covered ,4,7OO knots
 roughly 5.4O5 miles-in a little over sixteen months.