This 100-year-old message in a bottle washed up on a German beach — and it could be the oldest

This 100-year-old message in a bottle washed up on a German beach — and it could be the oldest ever found

Tossed into the North Sea sometime between 1904 and 1906, the bottle washed up on the beach on the German island of Amrum, and was found by a couple in April. Inside they found a postcard asking that it be sent to the Marine Biological Association of the U.K. — which they did.

“We were very excited,” Guy Baker, a spokesman for the group, said Friday. “We certainly weren’t expecting to receive any more of the postcards.”

Baker said the bottle was one of some 1,000 released into the North Sea by researcher George Parker Bidder, who later became the association’s president. The bottles were weighed down to float just above the sea bed, and used as part of a study into the movement of sea currents.

Inside each bottle was a postcard promising a “one shilling reward” to anyone who returned it to the association, along with information about where and when they found the bottle. Most bottles were trawled up by fishermen and returned decades ago, Baker said.

An old shilling has been sent to the couple who found the bottle.

Photo: Marine Biological Association of the U.K. via AP