"when you find this, the crew of the ill-fated ship Horatio ... is no more."

[asakiyume]

Today a dramatic and tragic message-in-a-bottle story came my way. Janis Blower, writing in the Shields Gazette, tells the story of a bottle that washed up in 1861 in South Shields, downstream from Newcastle upon Tyne in Great Britain. The whole story is here, but below are some excerpts:

The letter, which was dated February of the previous year, began: “Dear Friends, when you find this, the crew of the ill-fated ship Horatio, Captain Jackson, of Norwich, is no more.” It went on to say how the vessel had left Archangel, in north-west Russia, on January 8, 1860.

All was well at first, but then the ship found herself scudding before a gale for 10 days non-stop.

After a failed rescue attempt, the crew was reduced to eight, plus the master and mate, second mate, and two boys:

“We are not able to keep her up,” Capt Jackson wrote, describing 8ft of water in the hold and the vessel’s hatches all stove in. “We are worn out.”

He went on: “I write these few lines and commit them to the foaming deep in hopes that they will reach some kind-hearted friend who will be so good as to find out the friends of these poor suffering mortals.

“Death is welcome.”

He concluded the letter by listing the names of all those aboard.

Blower hasn't been able to find a ship called Horatio that was lost at that time. “Did she go down, was she saved? We'll probably never know,” she writes.

ETA: oiktirmos has a link to the complete text of the message in the first comment, below.

ETA 2: But quite likely this is just a dramatic hoax; see this comment, below.

Blower says that this image, which accompanies the story, is from the area where the bottle was found, but probably dates to the interwar years in the twentieth century.

Comments

[oiktirmos.livejournal.com]

The text of the message from Google Books -
https://books.google.com/books?id=SbEEAAAAQAAJ&lpg=RA1-PA175&ots=w5hk7OmVc4&dq=bottle%20archangel%20horatio%201860&pg=RA1-PA175#v=onepage&q=bottle%20archangel%20horatio%201860&f=false

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wow, awesome--thank you!

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

wow

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

right???

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Wow. I can't help wish that they made it, and got a few good years.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Of course--and sometimes dramatic rescues are made--like this one (http://asakiyume.livejournal.com/524681.html).

The other possibility, discussed below, is that the whole thing is a hoax.

[sovay]

Elsewhere in the world of Pen Pal: a documentary on the Bajau.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes I've seen that! Or rather, I haven't seen the actual documentary, but I've seen it exists.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I guess the other possibility is that it was simply a hoax. I would guess it would have been easy enough in 1861 to find out if a ship of that name had been lost, so it makes me wonder what there aren't any other details of what happened.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

One of the things the story makes me think about is how a novel is like a message in a bottle-- and how often we readers think (or want to think) that it's Secretly True in a street sense. I speak as on who was once convinced that there were "still" ents and dwarves and orcs in the Rocky Mountains. (Having been an utter goop has been extremely life-enriching.)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh, I believed things like that too. Like that I could actually, for real, get to Narnia. And even now, there's a sense in which I believe that the writing of something makes it True. That crew and captain live, and their deaths are felt with a pang, by everyone who reads the note--even if it's a hoax.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

It is a story whether or not there was such a ship. As are all our stories.

(Once upon a time when I was showering my sister burst into the bathroom to say that she knew that if we picked up a penny from the windowsill we would be transported to Narnia. I insisted on pausing to put on a bathrobe, and so far as I know Amanda still blames me that when we picked up the penny we stayed right in Carbondale, Illinois, annoyed with each other.)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh this is SUCH a lovely memory---I can just see the two of you, faintly annoyed, staring at each other. You were smart though. Suppose it had been winter there, and you'd been in just your pajamas?

I remember when my friend said she was sure that on Thursday we'd wake up in Oz (I also tried to get to Oz.) I had a little chalkboard and wrote out a schedule for all the things I would do that morning. I asked my mother what she wanted me to bring back as a souvenir. A munchkin hat, she said. I shared a bedroom with my sister, so I assumed she was going to be coming along. When we woke up on Thursday, we were still in the bedroom. Maybe the whole room had been transported? But the house was the same... maybe the whole house? Maybe the whole street? I was so let down.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

You were very clever to think that not only you but your surroundings might have been moved! Transport to Oz being so very seldom by tornado.

If my sister had had her way I would have been in Narnia naked, wet, and with soap suds still on me. She was always fond of putting me at a disadvantage.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

What a great memory!

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Not intending to threadjack, but have you read Neil Gaiman's Sandman? The graphic novel series from the early 90s? One of the reasons it remains one of my favorite stories, despite being a bit grim in places (it was marketed as a horror series initially, though it later became something far larger and more complex), is the way it accepted and acknowledged that very human desire to believe in things, and rather than condescending or dismissing it, wove it into the fabric of its metamythology.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I haven't, but I've heard a lot about it, and it definitely intrigues me.

I think many people divide belief into things that are worth believing and things that aren't (of course, what goes in those boxes differs from person to person) and then, if they encounter people who have beliefs that fall into the second box, they think of those people as misguided or deluded or foolish, or as victims. But the fact of belief changes a person's reality, regardless of what the belief is, and THAT is impressive and meaningful.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Yes! That's it exactly! I've seen some of that firsthand, for better and for worse.

For another riff on the theme, I also strongly recommend the movie Secondhand Lions, although I suspect you've seen it already. :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

No I haven't! I am always surprising people by the things I haven't seen or read. If it's out on DVD I'll see if I can get it on Netflix.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

It is! It's a fairly recent movie, from the early 2000s, I think. One of the last movies Haley Joel Osment did before he disappeared off into whatever void former child stars tend to inhabit. Also features Michael Caine and Robert Duvall. It's the sort of sweet, quiet, genuine story that barely made a blip in theaters despite the names attached to it, but earned a strong following on DVD because of sweetness and the resonance of what it has to say about human nature and belief. I suspect it may be a new favorite of yours. :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I found it and added it to my queue, which is fairly short, so I should see it soon ^_^

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That thought occurred to me, too. I know of other hoaxes like that.

ETA: I also wondered just how hard the reporter actually did look. Since it *is* actually something that ought to be find-out-able one way or another, did she just not try that hard? (I mean, I'm curious, but I'm probably not going to try either, just because my curiosity doesn't quite rise to the amount of time it would take.)

If there was no ship called Horatio registered, and no record of a ship lost, then it seems reasonable to assume it's a hoax.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

The writer unhelpfully says just 'Shields', but that's the long beach running from Tynemouth to Whitley Bay, so I think she means North Shields, not South.

But what an awful story; yet I don't want to believe it's a hoax.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in her story she mentions North Sands--do you think that's a tacit admission that it's North Shields? Should I edit the entry, maybe?

Someone on Facebook pointed out that there ought to be a registry of ships one could check. And certainly details of the note--which oiktirmos found--could be checked (i.e., is there any record of this person, and did they truly go missing at sea).

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Ah, now I'm home and looking at this on a good screen, I see that the photo itself is captioned 'North Sands, South Shields'. I withdraw my objection.

What a hive of activity you have stirred up!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Seriously! Isn't amazing what happens when you turn a story over to a bunch of lively minds?

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

But what an awful story; yet I don't want to believe it's a hoax.

It's very interesting, isn't it? On the one hand, I desperate want them to have escape. On the other - I don't want them to have not suffered at all...

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

The Shields?

That was wor gran's part of the world.

Lloyd's register should be able to provide the ship's name if it wasn't a hoax

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And the names of the sailors, recorded in the actual note (linked to in the ETA) ought to be checkable, too.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

You'd certainly have thought so.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

A bit of historical researcher's fu later:

There's one vessel named Horatio on Lloyd's register for 1860, but she's mastered by one W Burn out of Blyth in Northumberland where she was built in Burn's own shipyard in the eighteen forties and lading out of a French port in the first part of the year, so I suspect the message is a fake.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I'll add this info to the entry.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Y're welcome.

you know me and archive material! Always like a challenge! :o)

[oiktirmos.livejournal.com]

There is a ship Horatio from Blyth listed under
The Crews of the following Vessels wrecked on various parts of the Coast, or foundered at Sea, have been boarded, lodged, clothed, and forwarded to their homes by the Central 0ffice and Honorary Agents of the Shipwrecked Mariners' Society, between the 1st March, i860, and the 3]stMay, 1861.

https://books.google.com/books?id=SbEEAAAAQAAJ&lpg=RA1-PA175&ots=w5hk7OmVc4&dq=bottle%20archangel%20horatio%201860&pg=RA2-PA53#v=onepage&q=Horatio&f=false

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

But apparently, according to cmcmck's research, it was captained by someone named Burns and left a French port in the first part of the year. She couldn't have been departing from both France and Russia. The Horatio from Blyth may indeed have been wrecked, but the note couldn't have come from it, and the circumstances of the actual wreck would have to have been different.

... This is just me reaching conclusions based on the bits of evidence you and cmcmck have been so good as to turn up. And they could be incorrect!

[oiktirmos.livejournal.com]

I clipped the wrong text - it was Sept. 1 - Nov. 30, 1861.
See
https://books.google.com/books?id=SbEEAAAAQAAJ&lpg=RA1-PA175&ots=w5hk7OmVc4&dq=bottle%20archangel%20horatio%201860&pg=RA2-PA53#v=onepage&q=Horatio&f=false

Still odd that a ship Horatio would shipwreck later that year.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

*very* strange. You ask in your next comment, "Where is a time machine when you need it"--but maybe the hoaxer actually had one! Either that, or predictive powers.

[oiktirmos.livejournal.com]

The dates don't match either, but it is interesting that the Horatio would shipwreck near to the time of the finding of the bottle. If a hoax, was it concocted by someone connected with the Horatio before or after the shipwreck? Where is a time machine when you need it?

[vasma-pr.livejournal.com]

A very dramatic story! The mame of the port "Archangel" soinds strange to me. Did the author of the letter mean "Arkhagelsk"?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I think he did, for sure. Arkhangelsk is sometimes referred to in English as Archangel.