" Message in a bottle"

SS America - 1949

by Earl Piper

A copy of Earl Pipers message thrown from the stern in 1949, The drop off position for the bottle was one day out of New York in the Gulf Stream, by looking at current charts showing the flow of currents Mr Piper was able to ascertain that the bottle travelled 3,200 miles and was in the water about 520 days from the time it was thrown overboard until found in France. Mr Piper has therefore been able to determin that the bottled travelled at approximately 1/4 mile per hour.

As a 13-year old boy, I sailed aboard SS America with my family from New York harbor to Southampton,
England; the time was August/September of 1949. The occasion was the military transfer of my father, a US Marine officer, to London for duty there for two years.

My father, mother, younger brother and I were in adjoining staterooms and our family car also travelled with
us in the hold. I can remember a band playing as we pulled away from the pier in NY and how far it seemed from my vantage point on the rail to the people down on the docks. We passed the Statue of Liberty
as we steamed eastward and I remember seeing one of the lightships farther out.

At sea my brother and I would watch the flying fish skimming across the breaking bow waves and we played shuffleboard, swam in the pool, and stood at the very peak of the bow a la " Titanic" movie scenes.
The meals in the dining room were superb although as boys we never enjoyed having to be dressed up so much for eating.

One of my most memorable adventures aboard was the placing of a note in a bottle obtained from the galley and throwing it into the sea over the stern rail. As I watched it disappear into the wake I thought that would surely be the end of that... but it wasn't.

We made a brief stop off the coast of Ireland to put some passengers ashore by boat at Cobh; I vividly recall the beauty of that bright green Irish countryside seen at a distance and also how impressed I was with the men I saw on the small fishing boats far off the coast - it seemed they were frail and brave venturers on a vast
and unfriendly ocean.

When we docked at Southampton we went ashore and had to wait for our car to be unloaded. It was
soon swinging in the air from a loading boom and being lowered to its owners. As we waited, my brother
and I explored the dockside a bit and wandered into an open warehouse full of large cloth bags full of pepper. It was difficult to stay inside that building without sneezing and we found some humor in going in to have a sneeze or two and then out for relief.

Some 20 months later in London, my father came home one day with a letter for me - it was from France. To my amazement, it was from a family that lived on the Bay of Biscay, just south of Bordeaux - one of their children, a 4-year old girl named Marie, had found my bottle on their beach. Their letter was in French and I could read it fairly well with my school-learned French and the level of excitement in our house went up a thousand percent as we considered the travels of that small bottle in the Atlantic.

To this day I have kept that letter and others that sprang from our new friendship; the actual note from the bottle has been kept as well. I have never met Marie or her family; she would be a lady in her 50's today. My wife and I are talking about a trip to France to see what we can find.

My memories of the slow ocean-crossing days aboard majestic liners are good ones and it is a treat to share some of them on this excellent website. I presently reside in Beaufort, South Carolina. My name is Earl Piper.

 

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