BOTTLE CLUBS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 239, 18 November 1940, Page 8

BOTTLE CLUBS

EXISTENCE OF INTERNATIONAL:. ORGANISATION NOT INTERESTEtD IN DRINKING' The suppression "of several LOll-• don bottle clubs provides an appropriate opportunity to mention the existence of an International Bottle Club, whose'" members are not in tlie least interested in drinking. Col-?-onel Edward T. Bailey, an Australian, started this sodality in 1^6,by placing hundreds of messages in many languages in glass bottles.arict ; scattering them from the deck of a ship on its way from Vancouver toSydne3 r . From a casual bottle-drop-, ping concern , the International Bottie Club has become a systematisedr business. The members collect thousands of old bottles and hand them OA r er to passengers on long-distance' ships, with requests to drop them, over the side at specified points iiv the j,ourne3 r , as. far as possible from. ' land. Records of {he answers re- - ceived to the bottle messages are collated and passed round, an'd the general idea is that the curious hobby may one day provide valuable information as to the drift of ' world ocean currents and the direction of winds. Some of the bottles have tortuous and. long voyages; one b dropped by a Japanese Bottle Club member near Kamchatka, arrived three years later at Chile,, and messages thrown overboard at Alaska have turned up in Australia,;