(TheLastPatriotNews.com) – The discovery of a message in a bottle on the sands of Ocean City, New Jersey, could be the oldest find of its kind.
Amy Smyth Murphy, aged 49, was walking through Corson’s Inlet State Park during the July Fourth weekend when she stumbled upon an aged green bottle sealed with a cork.
Inside, it contained what seemed to be a business card from 1876 alongside a handwritten note, she disclosed to NJ.com.
Smyth Murphy believes the bottle, which is marked with “Barr & Brother Philadelphia”—a business from the mid-19th century—was cast into the ocean approximately 146 years ago.
This predates by ten years the vessel found in Australia in 2018 that currently holds the Guinness World Record.
“It’s just so interesting to be connected to people in this way,” Smyth Murphy conveyed to the news outlet.
Further, she has initiated the process for the artifact to be authenticated by Guinness World Records.
Within the bottle, one of the documents seemed to be a business card for “W.G. & J. Klemm,” a pair of brothers, William and John Klemm, who operated a men’s furnishings enterprise in Philadelphia until 1881, as per historical records from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Another document in the vessel made reference to a local yacht named “Neptune,” which was moored in Atlantic City, NJ, in the late 19th century under the command of Samuel Gale, archival newspapers indicated.
Smyth Murphy’s research suggests that Gale might have resided in Atlantic City during that era.
“I really like the mystery. I love the research,” Smyth Murphy commented.
She noted that the bottle also contained an unsettling surprise.
“The smell that came out of it was unbelievable. We were not prepared for that,” she described, likening the scent to an amplified version of the bay.
This discovery was made several months after a substantial beach fill project in the Ocean City region, which experts believe might have dislodged the bottle from the seabed.
“They dredge up things,” explained Steve Nagiewicz, a maritime history and marine archaeology instructor at Stockton University in New Jersey.
“Some of them just get stirred up and float around the ocean, and I think that’s what happened in her case. Those ocean currents can do some amazing things,” he remarked.
Smyth Murphy has shared her journey of deciphering the messages within the bottle through TikTok videos, showing her family delicately extracting the deteriorating papers with toothpicks.
As she awaits confirmation on whether her find has set a new world record, Smyth Murphy’s family has found the exploration of the bottle’s origins to be a fulfilling endeavor.
“It’s been really fun kind of doing it all together,” her brother, John Smyth, reflected.
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