4 October: Ship in a Bottle Day

Today is Ship in a Bottle Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about ships in bottles:

1. A ship in a bottle is the best known example of an impossible bottle, or a bottle containing something which looks like it would never fit inside the mouth of the bottle.
2. Ships aren’t the only things people put in bottles. Fruit, packs of Playing cards, tennis balls, padlocks and scissors are sometimes used instead.
3. The first mention of objects in bottles dates to 1719. The person who made them was a fascinating character in his own right. His name was Matthias Buchinger and he was an artist, musician and magician from Germany. Despite being born with no arms or legs, he made detailed engravings, played several instruments including the dulcimer, trumpet, and flute and several that he’d invented himself. He was an accomplished magician, who could make balls disappear from under cups and birds appear from nowhere. Just 2'5" (74 cm.) tall, he married four times and had at least 14 children by eight different women. He could have had as many as 70 mistresses and many more children the records don’t know about. Apart from making babies, another of his hobbies was making ships in bottles.
4. Opinions differ as to who created the oldest ship in a bottle, but sources agree that it would have been made in the late eighteenth century. It may have been a Turkish or a Portuguese three-masted warship made by Bob de Jongste or a Venetian First Class battle ship made by Giovanni Biondo.
5. It’s thought the earliest ships in bottles were made by sailors to pass the time during long, tedious sea voyages.
6. They became particularly popular in the late 19^th century, possibly because there was better quality Glass by then for making bottles and it was possible to see the object inside.
7. How do the ships get inside the bottles? The hull of the ship needs to fit through the mouth of the bottle. The masts are made separately and attached to the hull using hinges and string so that they lie flat against the deck. Once the ship is inside the bottle the strings are pulled to raise the masts.
8. Often the bottles used have minor distortions or soft tints so that the mechanisms used to raise the masts aren’t so obvious.
9. The largest ship in a bottle was the one that was placed on the fourth plinth of Nelson's column in 2010. It is a replica of HMS Victory, Horatio Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar. It has 80 guns and 37 sails. The sails are made from Indonesian batik which was mass-produced by Dutch traders at the time and sold in West Africa. It’s no longer on the plinth, but has been moved to the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
10. Fancy having a go at making a ship in a bottle out of lolly sticks? There are instructions on this website: https://supersimple.com/article/the-history-of-the-ship-in-a-bottle/.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

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