In the modern day, leaving a message in a bottle at sea is often deemed passé, with several forms of communication being deemed far superior, more accurate, and generally more accessible.
However, it shouldn’t be surprising that when you stumble upon a bottle that has washed ashore while spending time on a beach, a morbid curiosity will likely arise within you, prompting you to open it and see what awaits you.
This is what a couple did while on a beach in Northern Queensland, Australia. Upon finding a bottle on the shoreline, Rick and Crystal, a traveling couple with just over 550 followers on TikTok, decided to attempt to retrieve the note that sat inside it, dumping out a fair amount of what seemed to be sand in order to do so.
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When it became clear that they would not be able to claw the message out of the bottle so easily, the couple decided to read the first few words that could be seen through the glass.
In the process, Rick and Crystal came to the realization that the bottle contained the ashes of a deceased man named Geoffry.
The man seemingly had the desire for his ashes to travel the seas in the years after he passed, with the note adding, “If found, please throw bottle into outgoing tide so I can continue my journey.”
Unfortunately, he instead wound up mixed in amongst the sand of an Australian beach, something that many commenters below the TikTok found both comedic and shocking.
“You’d think they’d super glue the lid on,” said one comment that amassed 16 thousand likes, making light of the ease with which Geoffry’s ashes were dumped into the sand with very little thought.
Another commenter gained some clarity on what the couple did next, saying, “Just put some sand back in there. And chuck it back in. No one will ever know.” The original posters replied in agreement, stating, “That’s exactly what I did. Tried to get all of him back in there. Felt bad bro.”
As was noted earlier, the act of leaving a message in the bottle is far less common than it was at one point in time, with it becoming a popular act via the literary works of both Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens.
While both men lived and died in the 19th century, the act of leaving a message in a bottle at sea clearly did not die with them.
Dylan Murray