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& ssMaritime.net
With Reuben
Goossens
Maritime
Historian
T/n Raffaelo
"A Message in a Bottle"
By Joseph S. Gulotti
I was an energetic eleven year old and I could sing every Beatles song from memory. My
favourite song was Help, which I played over and over on my four-track tape
player. That year Richard Nixon finally won the presidency after two failed
efforts and inherited a raging in Vietnam. Jimi
Hendrix played a psychedelic version of The Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock
Festival that summer and rioting and discontent gripped many American cities.
Ready to set sail with Aunt
Dora and family to see us off
Photograph provided by Joseph Gulotti
I set sail with my Aunt
Dora shortly after noon on June 15, 1969 on the T/n
Raffaello, an Italia Line ocean liner of luxurious
splendour. We put out to sea from Pier 82, one of the numerous piers that
fingered out into the murky waters of the Hudson River on Manhattan’s
West Side. It was a warm Sunday afternoon and
a brilliant sun reflected off of the Empire
State Building
which stood out among the countless, less characteristic skyscrapers that made
up the Manhattan
skyline. At the furthest point west on 42nd Street, all the sounds of
a great metropolis were carried on a humid breeze. As we lifted anchor, the
noise of the city’s traffic was drowned out by the deep, drawn out sound
of the ships powerful fog horns.
A postcard home from Joseph
Provided by Joseph Gulotti
Joseph and Aunt Dora in Stressa,
Italy
Photograph provided by Joseph Gulotti
Joseph at Lake Lucarno,
Switzerland
Photograph provided by Joseph Gulotti
After a few days at sea, I began to get
homesick but the feeling quickly passed as the next several days were filled
with eating and swimming and running, playing with new friends and going to bed
way past my bedtime. During one of those days, Aunt Dora had an idea. Somewhere
north of Spain’s
volcanic Canary Islands off of the northwest coast of Africa,
she encouraged me to believe in magic and to dream the impossible. She told me
that if I put a note in a bottle and threw it into the sea that surely someone
would find it in some distant time, in some distant land. Captivated by that
magical possibility, I got a thin sheet of the ships blue stationary from the
cabins desk and began to write. Below a line drawing of the ship and Raffaello
written in cursive characters, I began my letter promising to anyone who found
my letter a reward. I stuffed the tightly rolled up treasure into an empty wine
bottle and sealed it tightly with a cork. That evening, after dinner, I tossed
the bottle overboard. I watched it bob on the waves until it disappeared into
the loneliness off the sea. As it faded from view so did its memory. Until …
Provided
by Joseph Gulotti
One day in March of 1972, the postman
delivered a letter addressed; Joseph Gulotti, Esq.
92-11 52nd Avenue,
Elmhurst, New York
11373 USA.
I rarely received any letters and that one wasn’t like any letter I had
ever seen. Not an envelope, rather a single thin sheet of letter paper that
when carefully unsealed showed the contents of the correspondence on one side
and the address written on the other. Just above the address was a yellow and
brown stamp picturing men building a boat out of wood.
In the corner of the stamp was the likeness of the Queen of England. I was so
excited. Beside the stamp it read par avion
aerogramme and below that printed to the character of a triangle was the
outline of the southern coast of Florida, Jamaica and Puerto Rico.
Within the triangle were several small dots labelled Turks and Caicos Islands, West Indies. I had no idea what to expect when I opened
it.
Provided
by Joseph Gulotti
To my disbelief and with complete astonishment,
years after I had cast my wine bottle into the ocean I read the words “On
19 March 1972, I found a bottle on…” It was so unexpected, so
impossible, but it was true. Someone really did find my bottle in a distant
time on a distant land. I ran down the stairs as fast as I could and burst into
Aunt Dora’s apartment. Dozing in her chair quietly listening to Vivaldi
on her Victrola, she was startled at my unexpected
entrance. I began to read her the letter. “I found your
bottle on Great Sand Cay with you’re note in it. This particular
Cay is uninhabited and the purpose for our visit there was just for an outing.
You offered a reward”, it continued, “however, rather than sending
me the reward I would appreciate it if you would send me a letter telling me
when you dropped the bottle in the ocean. I hope you had a good trip.” It
was signed; Sincerely, William C. Bivin. As if
protected by the Greek God of the sea Poseidon himself, my bottle was found
unbroken and perfectly sealed on a sandy beach almost four thousand miles away
from where I had dropped it into a devouring sea three years earlier.
To my relief, the traveller who discovered my
bottle had relinquished me of my promise of a reward and instead rewarded me by
taking the time to write to me and showing me that miracles were possible, if
you only wish hard enough. On March 19, 1993, twenty one years to the day
when my bottle was discovered, I experienced another miracle. On that day my
wife Cornelia and I were blessed with the birth of our only child, April. Years
later when she was no older than I was when I threw my bottle into the sea, she
closed her eyes, made a wish and tossed her own bottled message of the deck of
a boat while cruising the tranquil waters off the Ionian Sea. Perhaps Poseidon
will once again deliver a child’s dreams of magic and wonder to a distant
shore and into the hands of someone else on an outing.
Joseph seen during a return
visit to Lucarno in 2008
Photograph provided by Joseph Gulotti
I hereby wish to thank
Joseph for his interesting story and images. It is certainly interesting how a
bottle thrown overboard is not only found, but that someone actually responds
to it. I am sure that this voyage and event has left an indelible impression on
his mind and an most enjoyable memory of a great liner!
Reuben Goossens
Index
1 ... Italia Line
Main Page
2 ... Michelangelo
Photo Album
3 ... Raffaello
Photo Album
4 … Message in a
Bottle – An
amazing story of a bottle thrown from Raffaello by Joseph Gulotti
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is due!
This
notice covers all pages, although, and I have done my best to ensure that all
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that is, when a page is updated!
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