A message in a bottle found on a beach in Ocean City, New Jersey, may be the oldest message in a bottle ever found.
Amy Smith Murphy, 49, was walking through Corson’s Inlet State Park over Independence Weekend when she discovered an antique, green, corked bottle containing what appeared to be a business card from 1876 and a handwritten note. she told NJ.com.
Smith-Murphy said he believes the bottle, inscribed with the name of a mid-1800s business called Burr & Brother Philadelphia, was thrown into the water about 146 years ago – 10 years before the current Guinness World Record-holding container with a message was found in Australia in 2018.
“It’s been so interesting connecting with people in this way,” Smith-Murphy told the outlet.
She said she has applied to have the bottle recognised by the Guinness World Records.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper archives, one of the documents found in the jar was a business vehicle for W.G. & J. Klemm, brothers William and John Klemm, who ran a gentleman’s furniture business in Philadelphia until 1881.
According to newspaper archives, other documents found in the container described a local yacht named “Neptune” that was docked in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the late 1800s and captained by Samuel Gale.
Gayle may have lived in Atlantic City in the late 1800s. According to Smith-Murphy’s own research.
“I really love the mystery. I love the research,” Smith-Murphy said.
The unusual bottle, she said, also contained something a bit more unsettling.
“The smell that came out of there was unbelievable,” she said, describing the odor as “a million times worse than the bay smell.”
“We weren’t prepared for it.
The discovery comes just months after a multimillion-dollar beach reclamation in the Ocean City area, which experts say may have caused the bottle to become detached from the ocean floor.
“They’re dredging stuff,” Steve Nagiewicz, a professor of maritime history and maritime archaeology at Stockton University in Jersey, told NJ.com.
“Some fish get stirred up and drift through the ocean, which I think was the case with her. Currents can work wonders,” he said.
Smith-Murphy recounted his adventure of discovering a message in a bottle.Post a TikTok A video shows her family carefully pulling out pieces of rotten paper from the container using toothpicks.
While Smith-Murphy is waiting to hear back on whether her find broke a world record, her family said it has been rewarding to uncover information about where the bottle and its contents came from.
“It was a lot of fun for us all to do it together,” said Smith-Murphy’s brother, John Smith.
Guinness World Records did not respond to The Post’s request for comment on Sunday.
