Nearly 100 Year Old Message in a Bottle Found Off U.K. Coast

By Erica Ho, TIME

Nearly 100 Year Old Message in a Bottle Found Off U.K. Coast

August 31, 2012 Updated Aug 31, 2012 at 2:03 PM PDT

After floating on the lonely seas, adrift for nearly a century, the world’s oldest message in a bottle has finally been liberated and graced with a Guinness record.

Andrew Leaper, a Scottish skipper aboard the fishing boat Copious, discovered the bottle early April of this year, trapped in his fishing net as he sailed east of Shetland, an island group northeast of the U.K. mainland.

The bottle, which reportedly spent 97 years and 309 days at sea, beats the previous world record by more than five years.

Amazingly, it also turns out the exact same boat, the Copious, found the last record-setting message in a bottle. Though Leaper wasn’t at the helm of the boat that time, his friend Mark Anderson hauled in the bottle.

“It was an amazing coincidence,” Leaper commented.

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