I think this is a nice story and I’m glad he wasn’t arrested or fined. I do, however, have a certain song stuck in my head, and that’s not all that fun. — Dan

He Sent an SOS to the World, 2000 Times

In July 2017, a British man named Curtis Sullivan decided that it was time to start dating again. Sullivan, then age 49, was a widower — his wife, Julia, had died from cancer a year and a half prior. He was, as he’d later write, lonely — he missed the companionship he and his wife shared, and needed to fill that void. Inspired by a New York Times article written by another woman dying from cancer to her husband’s future wife, Curtis accepted that Julia would want him to be happy and move forward. He was ready to continue down a new path.

But he wasn’t a fan of dating in our modern world. As he wrote on his blog, “using any of the normal channels for this sort of thing (dating sites, friends, matchmaking services) seemed cliched or somehow less elegant, less noble in intentions than my own mind.” He wanted to reenter the dating world in a manner that was as special to him as Julia was, or at least, directionally so — her memory and their life together were owed nothing less. But what that meant, specifically, he couldn’t quite determine.

And then the Police arrived on the scene. 

No, not the cops — the Police, the English rock band from the 70s and 80s. Curtis was listening to the radio when their 1979 hit song, “Message in a Bottle,” began playing. The lyrics spoke to the loneliness she was feeling -- “Walked out this morning / Don’t believe what I saw / A hundred billion bottles / Washed up on the shore / Seems I’m not alone at being alone / A hundred billion castaways / Looking for a home.” Inspired, Sullivan went into action, taking the song literally -- except that he wasn’t going to just toss one bottle into the ocean. He was more ambitious than that.

Sullivan, a website user experience optimizer by profession, purchased 2,000 empty bottles and, with the help of his and Julia’s 18-year-old daughter, crafted a message, loaded up the bottles, and came up with a plan to distribute them. The note, which you can read here, outlines who he is, what he’s looking for, and how to contact him, and has a doodle of him as well. All he needed to do was get the bottles and notes into the hands of those who would care. So, as he explained on his blog, Curtis “armed with maps, tidal tables, a motorhome, 4G data, [and] provisions,” planned to spend a week driving around the UK, strategically distributing in the bottles in hopes that they would travel the world, finding him a new soulmate — or, at least, a few new penpals.

There was a problem, though: the water wasn’t always as cooperative as Sullivan had planned. As the UPI reported, some of Sullivan’s bottles didn’t make it into the open water. For example, a few dozen that he released in Wales went the wrong direction, accumulating on a nearby beach. Beachgoer Helen Gill told the wire service that “I went for a beach walk and we came across about 30 glass bottles with lids. They had lots of messages inside about finding love and at first, I thought it was some sort of dating thing but then I looked on his website and I got the idea. It's very romantic, but my friends are members of the Marine Conservation Society and they, and I, were very concerned about what it is doing to the environment.” She and others who came across clusters of Sullivan’s bottles asked him to stop. And some even alerted SEPA, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, after discovering roughly 200 bottles in a single river. SEPA looked into the matter briefly and contacted Sullivan, who apologized — he didn’t realize, and certainly didn’t intend — for his quest for connection to turn into a massive littering campaign. Per the BBC, he agreed to end the experiment before releasing the final wave of bottles.

But the littering aside, the idea was a successful one. Sullivan didn’t immediately share if he discovered a new true love, but he did write a follow-up blog post outlining all the ways his nearly 2,000 bottles helped him connect with others: “Although every message and story is as unique as a fingerprint, there are some common themes. I lost or am losing my partner like you. I hated dating sites. I struggled with my grief. You made me laugh. You made me keep going. You inspired my search. You are an incurable romantic. You reminded me of my partner I lost. I’d like to be your pen pal. You touched me across the human ocean without the need for a physical bottle.” He was one of a hundred million other proverbial castaways — and he was no longer alone.

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More About Messages in Bottles

Today’s Bonus fact: Sullivan did not have to wait for a response to his messages in the bottles, but he shouldn’t be surprised if he gets some more even years or decades from now. That’s because messages in bottles can float around the ocean for a very, very long time. The oldest known such message dates back to 1886, when per NPR, “sailors on a German barque called Paula tossed a gin bottle with a message inside into waters hundreds of miles off the western coast of Australia.” The bottle didn’t emerge on land until it was discovered on Wedge Island, a beach in Perth, Australia, in 2018 — 132 years after it was tossed into the ocean.

From the Archives: The Tiny Lie in Your Pantry: Okay, technically, this is a message on a bottle.

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And thanks! — Dan