a historic sailing ship, ocean currents, and a message in a bottle

[asakiyume]

My this-week's message-in-a-bottle story took me to some interesting places--first, to the story of the STS Sedov, a famous sailing ship.
STS Sedov, image from Wikimedia Commons


It started its days as the German Magdalene Vinnen II, built in 1921 as a cargo ship. According to Wikipedia, she carried all sorts of cargo:

apart from coal, she took timber from Finland, wheat from Australia, pyrite from Italy and unit load from Belgium.

She changed her name to Kommodore Johnsen when she was bought by a different company, and after World War II, she became property of the Soviet Navy and was renamed after the Arctic explorer Georgy Sedov.

Her 90th anniversary was in 2011, and in 2012 she began a voyage around the world--and it was on that voyage that three sailors (Dutch, Finnish, and Russian) tossed a message in a bottle from the ship when it reached Cape Horn, at the extremity of South America. That message then traveled 17,000 kilometers on circumpolar currents and arrived at Macquarie Island, a chilly place between Tasmania and Antarctica, where it was retrieved by wildlife rangers, cleaning rubbish. Here is the story from Australian news.

Circumpolar currents--the red arrow is Cape Horn; the blue arrow is (more or less) Macquarie Island. The message traveled east


Macquarie Island
Source: ECOS Magazine

Comments

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I'm a fan of historical sailing ships, and I didn't even know this one existed.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

What I like is that this one is an actual working one from the 20th century--I somehow had the impression that ships like this stopped being used as the 19th century gave way to the 20th.