MS. Found in a Bottle

MS. Found in a Bottle

MS. Found in a Bottle is an 1833 short story by famous American writer Edgar Allan Poe. In the story, a sailor tells his amazing adventures while he is at sea. As his ship moves farther and farther south, he writes down his story in a manuscript, or "MS.", and throws it into the ocean, hoping someone will find it.

Many people think the story was meant to make fun of common tales about sailors and adventures on the sea. Poe wrote "MS. Found in a Bottle" for a writing contest held by the weekly newspaper called the Baltimore Saturday Visiter. The judges liked all the stories, but they all agreed that Poe's story was the best. Because of this, Poe won a prize, and the story was published in the newspaper.

Plot summary

A man who is not named starts his journey on a cargo ship leaving from Batavia, now called Jakarta in Indonesia. A big storm called a simoom flips the ship over. Only the man and an old man from Sweden survive. The storm pushes the ship south toward the South Pole. The ship then crashes into a huge, old black ship called a galleon. The man climbs aboard and finds old maps and strange tools. The crew members are very old and cannot see him. He finds paper and a pen in the captain's room and decides to write down his story to cast into the sea. The ship keeps moving south, and the crew seems to expect something to happen as they reach Antarctica. The ship gets caught in a giant whirlpool in the ice and starts to sink.

Analysis

"MS. Found in a Bottle" is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories about the sea, along with "A Descent into the Maelström" and "The Oblong Box". The story creates a feeling of fear through ideas about science and faraway places humans cannot reach.

The strange ship in the story might make readers think of the famous ghost ship, the Flying Dutchman. Some people think the story’s ending is connected to old ideas about a hollow planet, suggested by John Cleves Symmes, Jr. and Jeremiah N. Reynolds. They believed the Earth had a hollow middle that people could live in, with openings at the poles. These ideas were thought to be possible science in the early 1800s. Poe used these ideas in another book he wrote later called The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838).

Some believe Poe’s story was meant to make fun of wild claims made by Symmes. Others think it was a parody or satire of sea stories, because the story’s events are very strange and the narrator keeps writing in a diary even through terrible situations. William Bittner thought it might have been making fun of a novel by Jane Porter called Sir Edward Seaward's Narrative (1831) or Symzonia (1820) by “Captain Adam Seaborn”, who some think was John Cleves Symmes. During this time, Poe also wrote other funny stories like "Bon-Bon", which he called burlesques of criticism.

Critical reception

When "MS. Found in a Bottle" was first shared, editors liked it for its imagination and rich style. Famous writer Joseph Conrad thought the story was one of the best of its type.

People believe this story may have inspired another well-known book, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Both tales tell of a person who goes to sea and faces amazing adventures on an unlucky ship.

Publication history

In June 1833, a newspaper called the Baltimore Saturday Visiter offered prizes for the best story and poem. Edgar Allan Poe entered with "MS. Found in a Bottle" and won the prize for the best story. The story was printed in the newspaper in October of that year.

Later, the story was printed again in a gift book and was also included in a magazine called the Southern Literary Messenger in 1835.