For The New Yorker, Lauren Collins dives into the history the message in a bottle, a phenomenon that can be traced back to “MS. Found in a Bottle,” a short story published in 1883 by Edgar Allan Poe. She profiles Clint Buffington, “one of the world’s most prolific hunters of messages in bottles.” He’s collected about 150 specimens over the years and takes Collins along on a trip to Mayaguana, the easternmost island of the Bahamas, to try their treasure hunting luck.
Buffington found his first M.I.B. on a rainy day in Turks and Caicos. “I was carrying a piece of Styrofoam on my back to shield me, like a turtle,” he recalled. The beach was full of empty bottles, but suddenly Buffington snapped to attention, without quite knowing why. “I get about ten feet away and feel this little electric charge—almost like a snakebite,” he said. There it was: a cobalt-colored glass bottle with a rubber cork stopper, lying on top of the sand, as though the tide had deposited it there just for him. The message inside, printed on bright-orange paper and tied with a piece of string, was written by Larry and Ruth, Canadians travelling to St. Maarten aboard a ship. “If you get this message, we would greatly appreciate a reply,” they wrote, thoughtfully enclosing two dollars for postage.
“There was no going back,” Buffington told me. “I knew if I could do it once, I could do it again.”
More picks from The New Yorker
The Scheme That Broke the Texas Lottery
“When a ‘purchasing group’ won a ninety-five-million-dollar jackpot, the victory caused a scandal in a state where opposition to legal gambling remains widespread.”
In Defense of Despair
“The feeling is most commonly framed as an end point, a level of despondency that cannot be overcome. But it doesn’t have to be.”
Becoming a Centenarian
“Like The New Yorker, I was born in 1925. Somewhat to my surprise, I decided to keep a journal of my hundredth year.”
