Here’s something extremely pleasant: a message in a bottle, written by the crew of a Soviet fishing vessel, discovered by a high school basketball coach in Alaska almost exactly 50 years later.
The bottle was found by Tyler Ivanoff, who lives in Shishmaref, Alaska, an island town of about 600 just north of the Bering Strait. “I found a message in a bottle today,” Ivanoff wrote on Facebook. “Any friends that are Russian translators out there?”
In an interview with The Moscow Times, Ivanoff said he discovered the bottle while on a boat trip with his children. “I showed my children the bottle, and they were very excited for me to open it,” he said. “I opened it up, and saw that it was in Russian. They asked me how [Russians] spoke. And I talked a little, like counting to 10 in Russian, and said a small poem that I learned in Russian from when I was in high school. I came home from [our] short boating trip and posted the photos online of the message to see if some friends can translate it.”
Here, per a translation on Twitter, is what the message says:
Best greetings from the Russian fleet of the Far Eastern Shipping Company. Fleet V.R.H.F. from vessel Sulak. I welcome you, who found this bottle, please inform us at the Vladivostok-43 vessel Sulak, to the entire crew. We wish you good health, long life and happy sailing! 20/06/1969
Delightful. Even more delightful, a Russian news outlet appears to have found the captain of the ship, now-86-year-old Anatoly Botanenko, who was 36 when he sent the message. Botanenko said he and his crew decided to send the message after receiving some good news about reaching their production quotas.
“Great joy!” he said (via Yandex). “It is surprising that exactly 50 years later the message was found. I took this ship personally. A huge steamer. The pride of my work.”
Perhaps this will be the start of a new trend in social networking, where instead of posting online, you write something nice to no one in particular and throw it into the ocean, and no one will have to look at it for at least 50 years.
34 Comments
Pfft. Sarah Palin saw it years ago from her house.
Someday, I will read an article about my home state and no one in the comments will mention Sarah Palin, but alas, that day is not today.
It most certainly is not!
A girl can dream.
Sorry. Just had to post this Police video. They were once fave group of mine 🙂
These days, a hundred billion bottles washing up on the shore is symptomatic of modern pollution rather than an epidemic of loneliness.
And generally unlikely, but it’s more poetic than♫ A hundred million bottles, join the Texas-sized patch of floating garbage in the Pacific… ♫
I was going to go with something more subtle like:The next morning, Ivanoff woke up and could not believe what he saw. A hundred billion bottles washed upon the shore.
GODDAMN IT. First thing I thought of.
Also, since The Police were once a favorite group… https://entertainment.theonion.com/you-know-i-used-to-be-kind-of-cool-once-1819583601
Knew was getting older, when visiting Swiss San Antonio girlfriend artist in Zurich for 1st time & we were listening to Sting’s solid solo album on cassette, ‘Blue Turtles’ something or another, which I thought was very good when she said she didn’t really like it & thought it was sorta bad. Didn’t fully understand all the implications. She was also a hard-core ‘Jungian’. At time, was mega-listening to Doors – American Prayer, which still think is very good album (she didn’t) though haven’t heard it in over 15 years btw. She also loved to go around topless. In public too! Is kinda a Swiss/European thing, I think. The next door 10-yr/old boy also liked seeing her boobs. He was always spying on us. Btw, Recently bought this..Was kinda ‘beer-buzzed’ at the time of purchase coupla days ago.[shoulder shrug]
You did notice the “recommended stories” at the end of the blog, right?
now to find the bottles with all those lost ballots 🤔
From what I understand, the opposite would happen in Soviet Russia.
Message finds YOU in bottle!
Bottle finds a message in YOU?
You find a message at the bottom of the bottle?
Great job, Tyler. By posting this so-called “innocent message,” you activated a dozen Soviet sleeper agents. At this very moment, they are establishing Russian footholds in retirement homes across the U.S.
You joke, but who do you think votes in greatest numbers? The Olds. And who will these sleeper agents be urging them to vote for?………You guessed it…
*slow clap**rapidly accelerates into hyper-fast clap that generates a sonic boom powerful enough to destroy the Earth*
Mount Ararat
Norm McDonald’s secret Kinja account confirmed.
And by “retirement homes”, you mean underneath malls in Indiana, right?
I took this ship personally. A huge steamer.With just one little letter change, this could be something I said after the last Indian buffet I went to.
Beat me to it. “The pride of my work,” too — like that sequence in Farina’s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.
The bit about their production quota makes me wonder if they were illegally harvesting whales, as much of the Soviet fleet was despite the lack of actual need for whale beyond how much the catch weighed.
I took this ship personally. A huge steamer.Oh, he said “ship.”
I threw a message in a bottle (well, an olive jar- my parents were Martini enthusiasts) into the Gulf of Mexico off Sarasota in December 1976. Four months later, it washed ashore in North Carolina./csb
I call BS. The bottle looks like it is in pristine condition. The paper isn’t yellowed after 50 years, and is that a plastic cap on the bottle?
Now when I stick a note in a plastic bottle, it will not be considered polluting, but charming!
Littering aside, I found this enormously charming (probably more so than could be justified) when catching the other side (RT’s Ruptly-affiliate interviewing the retired skipped of said Soviet fishing ship). I was convinced it was from the Soviet merchant marine (eh, pretty close?) before turning the subtitles on.
‘If you find this bottle, please send more Vodka. Give Nadia my love.”