132 Years Later: A Bottle Speaks

It was a secret message hidden for over a century. By chance, engineers inspecting a Scottish lighthouse stumbled upon a 132-year-old message in a bottle.

Support Links

1.     Northern Lighthouse Board [website]

2.     Fresnel lens [Wikipedia] 

3.     The Fresnel Lens: the Invention That Saved 1000 Ships [YouTube]

4.     History of lighthouses [Wikipedia]

5.     Message in a bottle: 10 famous floating note discoveries [ABC News]

6.     Message in a bottle [Wikipedia]

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Transcript

⏱️ 12 min read             

It was a secret message hidden for over a century. By chance, engineers inspecting a Scottish lighthouse stumbled upon a 132-year-old message in a bottle—written by workers from another era. What did it say, and why was it left behind? 

Welcome to That's Life, I Swear. This podcast is about life's happenings in this world that conjure up such words as intriguing, frightening, life-changing, inspiring, and more. I'm Rick Barron your host. 

That said, here's the rest of this story 

The old sentinel had done well - 200 years of warning ships away from Scotland's dangerous southwestern ocean coast. It was time, and long overdue, for the Corsewall Lighthouse, located in the small village of Kirkcolm, to get some TLC [tender loving care].

While poking around during renovations, and accessing the amount of work ahead of them, mechanical engineer Ross Russell stumbled upon something intriguing. Tucked away in a wall cavity of this historic lighthouse in was a mysterious glass bottle, its contents enticingly visible but blurry to the eye.

Taking great care, Russell and his team carefully chiseled a hole into the wall and extracted the bottle and then quickly headed to gather with the lighthouse keeper at the tower's base. As they huddled around, they could see it - beneath a makeshift seal of corroded wire and weathered cork lay a message, handwritten in cursive. The worn paper gave even an amateur detective a sense that the bottle and paper had been hidden for quite some time. Secrets from the past were about to be revealed.

Holding his breath, Ross took his hands and, with surgical precision, guided two cables delicately to extract history from the glass bottle. After much turning and twisting, the stubborn cork finally gave way from the top of the bottle. As Ross’s team leaned over his shoulder, they saw time crystallized into a single date scratched across the page: Sept. 4, 1892, a whisper from 132 years past.

Barry Miller, Corsewall's current keeper, recalled the moment, saying, "My hands were trembling like autumn leaves." Barry dropped everything when he heard about Ross's discovery to witness the moment. His voice still carried that day's electricity as he described reading the aged message aloud to his spellbound audience.

The anticipation had been a little nerve-racking. What tales lay trapped in those faded lines? A passionate romance, perhaps? The bitter words of a forgotten soul? Or maybe, as Miller joked with a gleam in his eye, "We'd all agreed to take the secret to our graves if it turned out to be the path to buried riches."

As it turned out, the bottle's secret wasn't gold or jewels - but to these modern-day lighthouse guardians, it was something far more precious: a handwritten time capsule from their professional ancestors, penned just as they were finishing up the same Fresnel lens that needed attention today.

As Miller unfolded the letter; he began to read the words. James Wells Engineer, John Westwood Millwright, James Brodie and David Scott were noted in the letter. The words danced off the aged paper, introducing a cast of characters from 1892 like old friends at a reunion. These men from James Milne & Son Engineers in Edinburgh, had spent their summer months - May through September - crafting the lighthouse's new eye. The lantern first blinked to life on a Thursday evening, September 15, 1892.

It should be noted that the team in charge of the lighthouse station at that time were John Wilson, Principal, John B Henderson, 1st assistant, and John Lockhart, 2nd assistant.

"It was as if they knew we'd be here," Miller conveyed, his voice soft with wonder. "Here we were, tinkering with their handiwork, and suddenly, they reach across time to tell us their story. You can't make this stuff up - their lens, our hands, separated by nearly thirteen decades but connected by this message in a bottle."

Miller expressed that it was so exciting, it was like meeting their colleagues from the past. It was actually like them being there.

"It was like touching them. Like them being part of our team, instead of just four of us being there, we were all there sharing what they had written because it was tangible and you could see the style of their handwriting.

Miller added one more thought that resonated with the crew there that day. He stated that the crew from 1892, knew what they had done. They had taken the time and effort to hide the bottle where it wouldn't be found for a long time."

Talk about a blast from the past! This wasn't just any old scrap of paper - this was pure Victorian-era gold, written when Queen Victoria herself was still running the show across the pond and America was gearing up to give Grover Cleveland another shot at the White House.

"Man, it hits differently," said Russell, the 36-year-old engineer, still buzzing from the discovery. "You're standing there, listening to words some dude wrote down when your great-great-grandparents were probably still in short pants. I mean, my whole body went electric, straight-up goosebumps!"

He couldn't stop grinning as he added, "Like, sure, finding a message in a bottle washed up on shore would be wild enough. But stumbling across one tucked away in a lighthouse wall? That's next-level cool - proper old-school Instagram, if you get what I mean. Best time capsule ever!"

Sometimes destiny whispers from behind old wood and plaster. Had the team not needed to peek at the support beams in the lighthouse, the bottle might have just stayed there, nestled behind that ancient cupboard, keeping its secrets for another century or more. "Pure chance," mused Russell, "that's all that stood between finding it and letting it sleep on."

Back in 1892, hoisting that massive Fresnel lens must have been quite the feat - the kind that makes workers want to leave their mark, to whisper "we were here" to the future. Did they dream their simple note would echo through generations?

And echo it has. As news traveled through the Scottish Highlands and beyond, families have begun connecting dots in their ancestral tapestries. BBC Scotland reports that descendants of those long-ago craftsmen are discovering their own threads in this luminous legacy.

"It's not just about finding an old note," Russell reflected, his voice warm with appreciation. "It's about watching these local families light up as they touch a piece of their past. That's the real treasure we uncovered behind those walls."

Don't be fooled into thinking lighthouses are relics of the past! From the rugged coasts of Scotland to the shores of the Isle of Man, over 200 of these noble sentinels stand proud and active, their legacy preserved by the dedicated souls at the Northern Lighthouse Board. These aren't museum pieces - they're working maritime heroes, maintained by an elite crew of engineers, technicians, and keepers who understand their vital mission.

Just ask Barry Miller - he's not your typical ivory-tower academic. For two decades, he's been the guardian of Scotland's southwestern beacons, and he'll tell you straight: fancy GPS and radio signals are great, but there's no substitute for the pure, honest beam of a lighthouse slicing through the darkness. "Essential?" he'll say, with the conviction of someone who's watched ships navigate treacherous waters, "Absolutely essential."

And he's right. When your ship is fighting through a storm, when electronics fail, when you're facing down nature's fury - those steady beams aren't just lights, they're lifelines. They're the difference between safe passage and disaster, marking the deadly dance of reefs and sandbanks that lurk beneath the waves.

Like an ancient spell returned to its sacred tome, the weathered bottle and its precious message now rest in Edinburgh's Northern Lighthouse Board sanctuary - but not for long. The whispers of 1892 will soon journey home to their secret chamber within Corsewall's stone embrace, where time stood still for over thirteen decades.

But this time, they won't rest alone. A new vessel will join the timeless vigil, carrying fresh ink and modern names - a mirror across centuries, as today's lighthouse guardians weave their own thread into this tapestry of maritime history.

"We're casting our own message into the ocean of time," Miller said softly, his eyes distant with possibility. "Somewhere in the mists of tomorrow, someone might discover both our stories, and the circle will be complete once more." 

What can we learn from this story? What's the takeaway?

The discovery of the 132-year-old message in a bottle was a poignant reminder of the human impulse to connect across time. Found hidden in the base of a lighthouse in Scotland, the note dated 1892, contained details of the workers lives, work, and possibly their struggles or camaraderie during the project. These messages were often left as time capsules—a way for workers to mark their presence and share a piece of their humanity with future generations.

The note was a gesture of goodwill to the unknown people who might someday discover it, sharing a snapshot of their lives and their era.

For the engineers who found it, the message served as a bridge to the past, making them feel connected to the individuals who laid the foundation of the lighthouse over a century ago. It's a rare, personal glimpse into the lives of people who lived in a very different time, yet shared similar aspirations, challenges, and dreams.

This story reminds us that even the most ordinary workers can leave an extraordinary mark on history through simple acts of leaving behind a note.

Well, there you go, my friends; that's life, I swear

For further information regarding the material covered in this episode, I invite you to visit my website, which you can find on Apple Podcasts for show notes and the episode transcript.

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