Sending an S.O.S.

One of the most fabulous concerts I ever attended was at Cincinnati’s Riverbend Music Center. Sting was on his Symphonicity Tour with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra. It was held in an open-air pavilion on a warm July evening. It was a heavenly atmosphere. The orchestra, backup singers, and Sting were all in black elegant suits or sexy dresses. The orchestra started and he appeared on stage to sing “An Englishman in New York” — it was electric. He followed with “Fields of Gold,” “Every Breath You Take,” “Shape of My Heart,” “Desert Rose,” “Roxanne,” “When We Dance,” “Fragile,” and “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You.” You can see the pattern of his material that evening — all positive, make you think, feel something inside lyrics.

Then came one of his most mysterious songs, “Moon Over Bourbon Street.” As he sang, a storm started rolling in slowly. Darkness came in with the cloud cover and the air felt thick. A slight wind blew in and we could feel the temperature drop 10 degrees quickly with a soft mist spraying into the covered arena. He must have manifested the atmosphere he wanted for the spookiness of this song. With a large clap of thunder in the last verse he delivered as a backup singer howled like a wolf. He finished the song and over the microphone he thanked God for his participation. The audience all clapped and he returned to his repertoire with his last song, “Message in a Bottle,” which states “I’ll send an S.O.S. to the world.”

I have thought of that many times since and only now know what that would be. It would be to trust your judgments and make decisions in your days ahead that have a positive effect on you and those around you.

What would your message in a bottle be? What S.O.S. to the world would you send?

132 Years in a Bottle

The world’s oldest message in a bottle actually worked.

On June 12, 1886, the captain of the German sailing barque Paula threw a bottle overboard in the Indian Ocean, 950 km from Australia. Inside was a printed form asking the finder to note where it turned up and mail it back to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg — part of a 69-year experiment to map ocean currents and find faster shipping routes. Thousands of bottles went into the sea. Only 662 ever came back.

In January 2018, Tonya Illman spotted something sticking out of the sand near Wedge Island, north of Perth — while digging out the family car. Her son’s girlfriend tipped out the sand and found the note: damp, rolled tight, wrapped in string. The date, the coordinates, the ship’s name, the captain’s handwriting — all of it matched the Paula’s original meteorological journal, still sitting in a German archive. The bottle and note spent 131 years and 223 days waiting in the dunes, and it still counts as the oldest message in a bottle ever found.

The finders never got to keep it quiet in a bookcase — the note was a printed form, not a love letter, but the romance is the same one Debbie felt at Riverbend: somebody, somewhere, sent a message to the world and waited to see who would answer. Of the 663 slips returned to Hamburg over 69 years, not one bottle had ever been found with its note still inside — until the Illmans’. Yours doesn’t need an ocean or a century. It just needs to be sent.

Cast Your Own Message in a Bottle

An editable tip sheet — fill it in, download it, keep it. The first eight are yours; the last two are a teaser for next issue.

1. Date it like a treasure.

Put the full date — month, day, year — on your letter. “Found after” is half the romance; the finder knows exactly how far your words traveled through time, and it makes the note a genuine artifact instead of a prop.

2. Write to one person, not the world.

Even though an S.O.S. goes “to the world,” a message addressed to “whoever is reading this” feels warmer than one aimed at nobody. Talk to the finder like a neighbor. It’s a letter, not a broadcast.

3. Say where you are in life.

One line about your corner of the world — the town, the season, what you were doing when you wrote it — anchors the message in a real place and moment. Twenty years from now, that line is the treasure.

4. Share one piece of hard-won advice.

This is the heart of it: trust your judgment, and make decisions that have a positive effect on you and those around you. One honest lesson beats a page of quotations. Keep it short and keep it true.

5. Make one small request.

Ask the finder to do one tiny good deed and “release it forward” — pay a compliment, call an old friend, do a kindness in your name. A message that asks for nothing gets admired; one that asks for one small thing gets acted on.

6. Include something local and small.

A pressed flower, a ticket stub, a photograph, a recipe card, a small coin — something flat and small. It’s proof of where the bottle began, and it gives the finder something to hold while they read.

7. Waterproof everything but the mystery.

Zip-close bag, wax paper, or a jar with a good seal. Preserve the letter, but let the ink and paper be ordinary — the finder should feel it was made by a real person, not a museum.

8. Give the finder permission to keep going.

One line: “If this bottle finds you at a hard moment, let this be the sign you were waiting for.” A message that arrives exactly when someone needs it is the whole legend of the bottle.

9. Send it properly.

Seal it, weight it (a little sand or pebbles so it rides low and doesn’t tip), and set it adrift from a legal spot — or gift it instead: buried in a garden, tucked in a wall, hidden on a trail, or handed to a grandchild for their own launching day. Want the rest of this one — and the full Bottle Notes kit? It’s reserved for subscribers. Unlock the whole sheet in the next issue.

10. Write your S.O.S. in code — just a little.

Start with those three famous letters — S.O.S. — or a riddle, or a map to wherever you’ve hidden it. A tiny puzzle makes the finder a participant instead of a bystander, and it pairs perfectly with this issue’s crossword. Want the rest of this one — and the full Bottle Notes kit? It’s reserved for subscribers. Unlock the whole sheet in the next issue.