Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
AMAZING FIND
STUDENT Grant Peters was taking a last look around Post Office Bay on Floreana Island in the Galapagos when he spotted a partially-buried bottle in a sand dune.
Inside was a rolled up scroll of paper – a real-life message in a bottle.
It read: “Hugh Craggs, Yacht St George RTYC, Will any finder please enclose message bearing date, name of finder, of ship, destination, do a rebury and send a postcard to Hugh Craggs 50 Ruskin Ave Manor Park London E12.”
It was dated Aug 1, 1924.
Grant, 26, from Toronto, was keen to find out more about Hugh so, after the discovery in May, he asked for help on discussion website Reddit
What emerged was an amazing tale of fantastic voyages, cannibals and pirate treasure, and how a teenager who set sail from London almost a century ago seeking adventure sure found it.
In 1922, 18-year-old Hugh and his three brothers lived in East London with his mother Imogen, after the death of his father John, an inspector with Scotland Yard who was also a published poet.
Hugh, an assistant in the hosiery business, longed to escape his dreary life.
He tried to join Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition, but was not chosen. Then on a train one day he saw an advert for a steward on an expedition to be led by Dr Cyril Lockhart Cottle, and funded by Sir Jeremiah Colman of the famous mustard family. They were to set sail on a schooner called Malaya.
Leaving the train at the next station he wired Dr Cottle and arranged to meet him, bubbling with so much enthusiasm he won over the adventurer, beating 2,000 other applicants.
In a newspaper interview just before they embarked, Hugh said: “I’ve been longing to go on a trip of adventure for years. It’s come at last.
“We are to be away for about three years. I expect to find all the things I’ve read about. Wild beasts, we’re looking for wild animals, savages, fights with natives, we’re ready for anything.”
There is even a British Pathe News reel entitled ‘Dr Cottles’s Expedition To Cannibal Islands’ showing the 90-tonne Malaya before the voyage moored in a London dock.
The prime purpose was to look for new species of porpoises and dolphins. Sadly they would do this “by harpooning them”.
Dr Cottle said: “We shall probably go to Vigo then to the Canaries, to the West Indies, on to Colon through the
Panama Canal; from