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Piece by piece, mystery of 107-year-old message in a bottle becomes clearer

Clues are being pieced together around the mysterious 107-year-old message in a bottle that washed up on a Tofino beach this week. Courtenay resident Steve Thurber found the green bottle near Schooner’s Cove.
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Steve Thurber of Courtenay has yet to open the bottle with an envelope inside it dated Sept. 29, 1906.

Clues are being pieced together around the mysterious 107-year-old message in a bottle that washed up on a Tofino beach this week.

Courtenay resident Steve Thurber found the green bottle near Schooner’s Cove.

Through the murky glass, he was able to read the writing on the envelope inside. It was signed by a man named Earl Willard and dated Sept. 29, 1906.

Research by two genealogists shows Willard was born in 1888 in Michigan.

That means he would have been 18 years old when he threw the bottle in the ocean 76 hours into a journey on the steamer Rainier, sailing from San Francisco to Bellingham.

Willard, listed as a general labourer on his marriage certificate, wed Lena J. Bruce in 1907 in Bellingham.

“Was he [sailing] up to Bellingham because he met this girl?” Thurber wondered.

He’s also curious to know who the message was intended for and whether there’s a note inside the envelope. “It’s still a mystery, that part.”

In 1911, the couple was living in Vancouver. They then moved back to the U.S. The 1920 census shows them living in Seattle.

Thurber said he has found an Earl Willard Jr. who lives in Greenbank, Wash. He sent a message to the man on Facebook detailing his find and asking if the Earl Willard who wrote the message in the bottle might be a relative.

Thurber said it’s been fun piecing together the mystery. “You’re kind of delving in deeper and deeper.”

Thurber has alerted the Guinness World Records committee about his find but was informed it could take months to process and verify the claim.

The official world record for oldest message in a bottle was one dating back to 1914 that washed up in 2012.

That one was one of 1,890 bottles cast into the water as part of an experiment by the Glasgow School of Navigation to map undercurrents of the sea around Scotland.

kderosa@timescolonist.com