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    • 108 Year Old Message in a Bottle is Fourth Oldest
    • 107 Year Old Message in a Bottle is Fifth Oldest
    • 101 Year Old Message in a Bottle is Sixth Oldest
    • 98 Year Old Message in a Bottle is Seventh Oldest
    • 88 Year Old Message in a Bottle is Eighth Oldest
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Tag Archives: Clint Buffington

St. Kilda’s Mail Boats & Bottled Messages

24 Thursday Nov 2022

Posted by Clint Buffington | Message in a Bottle Hunter in message in a bottle

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Clint Buffington, John Sands, Mail Boat, message in a bottle, RIchard Kearton, Scotland, St. Kilda

St. Kilda: The Remotest Scottish Islands & Home of “Mail Boats”

Once upon a time, the remote islands of St. Kilda relied entirely on a unique postal system: Letters destined for the outside world were set adrift in tiny “mail boats”– essentially glorified messages in bottles–that carried them either to the Scottish mainland, or sometimes Norway. Each missive included money for the finder to send the beached message onward to its intended recipient. This system began with an emergency involving a shipwreck near St. Kilda (more on this below) and went on for decades with remarkable success. The original era of the “mail boat” spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, tourists visiting the islands today still make and send both mail boats and messages in bottles successfully. Many of these letters drift east as intended, and reach the mainland just as they did over a century ago.

Here’s what these “mail boats” looked like back in the day:

St. Kilda Mail Boat

A St. Kilda Mail Boat. The little wooden “boat” is on the right, the inflated sheep skin on the left. Photo from “With Nature and a Camera,” by Richard Kearton, 1897.

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Old Message in a Bottle Traced to Sunderland Seaman Paddy Taylor!

05 Saturday Feb 2022

Posted by Clint Buffington | Message in a Bottle Hunter in message in a bottle

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Clint Buffington, England, message in a bottle, Paddy Taylor, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear

Sunderland Seaman Paddy Taylor’s Message in a Bottle Has Been Solved!

Well, friends and neighbors – and I mean that literally for folks in Sunderland’s Town End Farm – a bit of message in a bottle magic has happened! The astute and clever Sue Taylor took one look my Facebook post sharing the bedraggled message in a bottle I found from someone in Sunderland and realized that the the handwriting looked familiar… So she passed her phone to her partner, Paddy Taylor, for a look. At once, Paddy realized that the last name was not “THYLE” or anything like it. No, it was his own last name: TAYLOR! And the author of this message in a bottle? None other than the world-traveling, Sunderland seaman Paddy Taylor himself! Continue reading →

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A Message in a Bottle from the Sara II

30 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by Clint Buffington | Message in a Bottle Hunter in Adventure, message in a bottle, Mystery Message, Travel

≈ 3 Comments

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Clint Buffington, message in a bottle, mystery message, Sailboat, Sara II

Five days after I found Kelvin’s message in a bottle, I was hiking with my brother on an uninhabited island when I found what looked like a calendar in a bottle with writing on the inside. Check out how rocky the shore is! Can you spot the bottle?Chris and John Message in a Bottle 2011 2

The calendar was for 2004, which would make it Continue reading →

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Mystery Message #7: “Taken Prisoner by a Grumpy Old Man”

30 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by Clint Buffington | Message in a Bottle Hunter in message in a bottle, Mystery Message

≈ 9 Comments

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beachcombing, Clint Buffington, message in a bottle, mystery message

This post is named inaccurately. See, this was actually the first mystery message I solved–not the seventh!

It was 2007, and I had just found my very first messages in bottles. I couldn’t believe it was happening–this thing I’d dreamed of for years (finding a message in a bottle) had suddenly become a reality. Crazy!
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Mystery Message #6: Two Names in a Medicine Bottle

28 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by Clint Buffington | Message in a Bottle Hunter in Adventure, message in a bottle, Mystery Message

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Angela Guerra, Clint Buffington, found, message in a bottle, Mystery, Ramon Soler Deliz

It has been a while since I have posted one of the “Mystery Messages” that keep me up nights, wondering who on earth sent them and why.

You might remember The Case of the Crazy Dollar Bill, or the mystery message from Christopher aboard the Gripsholm, also known as the Sagafjord. You might recall The Mystery of the Beautiful Terrorist, or the Mystery Cameras I found washed ashore–one of which contained photos of a man I am hoping to identify. Continue reading →

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Canterbury Trails

17 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by Clint Buffington | Message in a Bottle Hunter in Adventure, message in a bottle, Travel

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Canterbury, Chaucer, Clint Buffington, Garden of England, Geoffrey Chaucer, Letterboxing, message in a bottle, Pilgrim's Way, public footpath

Here’s that bottle I found while shuffling past a bunch of plastic body parts on the beach in 2011:

103_3854 Continue reading →

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