A message in a bottle found off the west coast of Ireland may have come from a Taiwanese ship that disappeared four years ago. Although the authenticity of the message has yet to be determined, families of the missing crew members are hopeful.
Matthew Long was walking with a friend on the beach of Inis Oírr, a small island west of Ireland, last week. There they found a bottle with a handwritten note inside.
“We used a translation app and the first half of the message was translated to a distress message in Indonesian,” Long told Al Jazeera. He then handed the bottle over to the local police. Long also put a photo of the note on discussion platform Reddit, where self-proclaimed “internet detectives” went to work to investigate where it came from.
The note reportedly says: “Please send help! We have been lost since December 20. There are three of us here. We don’t know the name of this island. We are injured. HELP. HELLO. SOS.” The letter ends with the Chinese character for “Li” and the name “Yong Yu Sing No 18”.
According to the Taiwanese press agency Central News Agency, a boat with that name was reported missing on January 1, 2021. The owner had lost contact with the captain of the ship two days earlier. The captain’s last name was Li.
Note is being taken seriously in Taiwan
The fishing boat was later found 600 kilometers from the Midway Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Taiwanese prosecutors called the incident an accident. Li and his nine crew members were never found.
Although it is not known if the note is genuine, the relatives of the missing persons are taking the find seriously. According to Al Jazeera, they have requested the Taiwanese government to investigate whether the message in a bottle is genuine.
The Taiwanese Ministry of Justice, which investigated the incident in 2021, did not respond directly.
