3个神奇的漂流瓶故事
3个神奇的漂流瓶故事
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.
向大海中抛去一条信息，看看命运——受海流和风的怂恿——会把这条信息传递给谁，这是一件不可否认的浪漫之事。
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.
至少从公元前310年起，信息就被塞进瓶子里，然后神秘地航行在海上当时，希腊哲学家西奥弗拉斯特斯(Theophrastus)用这种策略来检验他的理论，即大西洋流入地中海。事实上，所谓的“漂流瓶”仍然被用来绘制洋流图。
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，除了研究海洋环流的研究人员之外，还有许多其他动机迫使人们缄口不言，让他们去航海探险。从救援请求、悲伤的告别到随意的便条，瓶子里的信息是我们已经习惯的高速通讯模式的一种奇怪的解毒剂。以下是一些更引人注目的故事，描述了海上传递信息的旅程。
1.A bittersweet reminder
苦乐参半的提醒
A simple brown bottled plucked from the Baltic Sea by a fisherman gave one woman a glimpse of the grandfather she had never met.
一个渔民从波罗的海捞来一个简单的棕色瓶子，让一位妇女瞥见了她从未见过的祖父。
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.
渔夫康拉德·费舍尔(见上图)在理查德·普拉茨在德国海岸徒步旅行时将瓶子扔进波罗的海101年后发现了这只瓶子。尽管普拉茨于1946年去世，一位系谱学家根据线索找到了他的孙女安吉拉·厄德曼(Angela Erdmann)的家。普拉茨在埃尔德曼出生前6年就去世了，这使得寄明信片的过程又苦又甜。
"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."
埃尔德曼在接受《卫报》采访时表示:“他还在瓶子里放了两枚当时的邮票，这样发现者就不用花钱了。”“但他没想到要花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员和他的43名同伴在南太平洋的一个小岛上遭遇暴风雨并失事。没有补给，所有船员最终都死了;但在此之前，松山写了一条消息，讲述了他们的不幸遭遇。直到150年后，人们在日本平津村附近发现了这只瓶子，才知道这群人的下落。
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，第一次世界大战的英国士兵托马斯·休斯给他的妻子写了一封信，封在一个姜汁汽水瓶里，扔进了英吉利海峡。两天后，他在法国的战斗中牺牲。时间快进到1999年，一位渔夫在泰晤士河上发现了这个瓶子。休斯夫人于1979年去世，想把这封信寄给她已经太晚了，但对于她86岁的女儿来说，这封信是在她新西兰的家中寄给她的。
