3個神奇的漂流瓶故事

3個神奇的漂流瓶故事

There's something undeniably romantic about tossing a message into the ocean and seeing to whom fate — abetted by the currents and wind — might deliver the marine missive.

向大海中拋去一條信息，看看命運——受海流和風的慫恿——會把這條信息傳遞給誰，這是一件不可否認的浪漫之事。

Messages have been slipped into bottles and shipped on mysterious voyages at least since 310 B.C., when Greek philosopher Theophrastus employed the tactic to test his theory that the Atlantic flows into the Mediterranean Sea. And in fact, so-called "drift bottles" are still employed as a means of charting ocean currents.

至少從公元前310年起，信息就被塞進瓶子里，然后神秘地航行在海上當時，希臘哲學家西奧弗拉斯特斯(Theophrastus)用這種策略來檢驗他的理論，即大西洋流入地中海。事實上，所謂的“漂流瓶”仍然被用來繪制洋流圖。

But aside from researchers studying oceanic circulation, there are many other motives that compel people to cork up their words and send them on seafaring adventures. From rescue pleas and sad farewells to random notes, messages in bottles are a curious antidote to the high-speed modes of communication we've come accustomed to. The following are some of the more remarkable tales describing the journeys of messages delivered by the sea.

但是，除了研究海洋環(huán)流的研究人員之外，還有許多其他動機迫使人們緘口不言，讓他們去航海探險。從救援請求、悲傷的告別到隨意的便條，瓶子里的信息是我們已經習慣的高速通訊模式的一種奇怪的解毒劑。以下是一些更引人注目的故事，描述了海上傳遞信息的旅程。

1.A bittersweet reminder

苦樂參半的提醒

A simple brown bottled plucked from the Baltic Sea by a fisherman gave one woman a glimpse of the grandfather she had never met.

一個漁民從波羅的海撈來一個簡單的棕色瓶子，讓一位婦女瞥見了她從未見過的祖父。

German fisherman Konrad Fischer holds a message in a bottle on the fishing boat 'Maria I' in Kiel, Germany in March 2014. The bottle was tossed into the sea in 1913. (Photo: UWE PAESLER/AFP/Getty Images)

Fisherman Konrad Fischer (shown above) found the bottle 101 years after Richard Platz tossed it into the Baltic while on a hike on the German coast. Though Platz died in 1946, a genealogist followed the clues and found his way to the door of his granddaughter, Angela Erdmann. Platz died six years before Erdmann was born, making the delivery of the postcard bittersweet.

漁夫康拉德·費舍爾(見上圖)在理查德·普拉茨在德國海岸徒步旅行時將瓶子扔進波羅的海101年后發(fā)現了這只瓶子。盡管普拉茨于1946年去世，一位系譜學家根據線索找到了他的孫女安吉拉·厄德曼(Angela Erdmann)的家。普拉茨在埃爾德曼出生前6年就去世了，這使得寄明信片的過程又苦又甜。

"He also included two stamps from that time that were also in the bottle, so the finder would not incur a cost," Erdmann told The Guardian. "But he had not thought it would take 101 years."

埃爾德曼在接受《衛(wèi)報》采訪時表示:“他還在瓶子里放了兩枚當時的郵票，這樣發(fā)現者就不用花錢了。”“但他沒想到要花101年。”

2. Castaways revealed

漂流者透露

In 1794, a Japanese seaman named Chunosuke Matsuyama and his 43 companions were caught in a storm and shipwrecked on a South Pacific island. Without supplies, all of the crew eventually expired; but not before Matsuyama wrote a message telling of their misfortune, carved in coconut wood and slipped in a bottle. No one knew what had become of the group until the bottle was discovered 150 years later near the Japanese village of Hiraturemura.

1794年，一位名叫松山楚介的日本海員和他的43名同伴在南太平洋的一個小島上遭遇暴風雨并失事。沒有補給，所有船員最終都死了;但在此之前，松山寫了一條消息，講述了他們的不幸遭遇。直到150年后，人們在日本平津村附近發(fā)現了這只瓶子，才知道這群人的下落。

3.And 85 years later…

85年后……

In 1914, British World War I soldier Pvt. Thomas Hughes wrote a letter to his wife, sealed it in a ginger ale bottle, and tossed it into the English Channel. He died two days later fighting in France. Fast forward to 1999 when a fisherman found the bottle in the River Thames. It was too late to deliver the letter to Mrs. Hughes who died in 1979, but not too late for Hughes' 86-year-old daughter, who was only 1 when her father died — the message was delivered to her at her home in New Zealand.

1914年，第一次世界大戰(zhàn)的英國士兵托馬斯·休斯給他的妻子寫了一封信，封在一個姜汁汽水瓶里，扔進了英吉利海峽。兩天后，他在法國的戰(zhàn)斗中犧牲。時間快進到1999年，一位漁夫在泰晤士河上發(fā)現了這個瓶子。休斯夫人于1979年去世，想把這封信寄給她已經太晚了，但對于她86歲的女兒來說，這封信是在她新西蘭的家中寄給她的。