Message in a bottle found in Ireland prompts theories about Taiwanese crew

A message in a bottle found off the west coast of Ireland has revived hopes for answers about the fate of a Taiwanese fishing crew that disappeared four years ago.

Internet sleuths have linked the note, a purported SOS message written in a mixture of Chinese, Indonesian and English, to the Yong Yu Sing No 18, a Taiwanese fishing vessel that was found adrift with its crew missing in 2021.

Matthew Long said that he and a friend were walking on a beach on Inisheer, a small island located about 8km (5 miles) off County Clare, last week when they came across a wax-sealed bottle containing the handwritten note.

“We used Google Translate and the first half of the message translated to an SOS message in Indonesian,” Long told Al Jazeera.

Long said he handed the note over to the local police before posting about his discovery on the social media site Reddit, where internet sleuths quickly got to work trying to track down its origin.

“We posted it in a few places online, but when we posted it in r/beachcombing, it blew up and clever Redditors were able to trace it back to a real missing ship crew,” Long said.

According to the Reddit posting, the text reads: “Please send help! We are lost since 12/20. There are 3 of us here. We don’t know the name of this island. We are injured. HELP. HELLO. SOS.”

The note ends with the Chinese character for “Li” and the name “Yong Yu Sing No 18.”

An Garda Síochána, the Irish police service, said it does not comment on third-party content online but confirmed it had received a “report of an item found” on Inisheer last Saturday.

It declined to provide further information.

The Yong Yu Sing No 18 was reported missing on January 1, 2021, after its owner lost contact with the ship’s captain, a man surnamed Li, two days earlier, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency.

The fishing vessel was later found approximately 600km (373 miles) from Midway Atoll, an unincorporated United States territory in the North Pacific Ocean, with its crew and lifeboat missing.

The incident was later ruled an accident by Taiwanese prosecutors, but the fate of Li and his nine Indonesian crew members remains unknown to this day.

The Taiwan Yilan District Prosecutors Office, which investigated the case in 2021, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Long’s Reddit post has received nearly 10,000 upvotes, or “likes”, and 1,200 comments from users, many of them offering theories about the crew’s fate and debating whether it is more likely that the note is genuine or a hoax.

In Taiwan, the note has been taken seriously by advocates for the families of the missing crew, including the Su’Ao Fisherman’s Association.

“This association relays the hope that the government will verify the situation through appropriate channels, and if confirmed to be true, is willing for the government to cooperate with international organisations to coordinate rescue efforts,” the association said in a statement to local media.

The Su’Ao Fisherman’s Association did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Internet users on Taiwan’s PTT message board have also debated the authenticity of the note.

Some have compared it with an incident in 1992 in which a container of 28,000 plastic ducks and bath toys fell off a cargo ship during a storm.

In the decades since the incident, the ducks have washed up around the world, including as far away as Scotland.

Long said he is uncertain about whether the note is genuine, but believes it is possible.

“I don’t know about the note’s authenticity or if it was really sent by the crew of that ship,” he said.

“I was very sceptical at first and believed it to be a hoax when I first opened and read the message, but since then, it is starting to look more plausible to me.”