3-028-249 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Sea-Messenger, to convey letters from ships in peril, 1870. 'The little vessel represented in our Illustration has been invented by Mr. J. A. R. Vandenbergh...to be freighted with letters and papers belonging to a ship in danger of foundering at sea, or in any danger of being wrecked. It will, in such a case, serve as the best vehicle for the preservation of records and important documents, and in all probability for their conveyance, by favouring winds and tides, to some near or distant shore. It is certainly much better than the ordinary glass bottle, which may be fractured by any floating spar or fragment of wreck, or may be dashed to pieces by the wave casting it upon a rocky coast...The water-tight and airtight metallic hull of the "Sea Messenger," with its extreme buoyancy, will ride in safety through the most violent storms, and it has capacity to hold not only the ship's papers, records of the voyage, lists of the passengers and crew, and a brief report of the disaster, specifying the latitude and longitude and time of its occurrence, but letters from those on board to their friends, wills, or draughts for money, or bills of exchange, or any other papers affecting their private interests'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.