Message in a bottle

I AM surprised that you suggest, in your article on Jeremiah Burke’s message-in-the-bottle from the Titanic (October 26), that “it is believed he tossed it into the Irish Sea a few miles off the Irish coast”, and not, as has always been believed, when he realised the ship was sinking.

The Titanic sailed from Roche’s Point on April 11, 1912, and struck the iceberg on 13th, as you state. Why do you say that his final message was dated “either April 12 or 13?” It is clearly dated 13/4/1912 in your photograph. On this date the ship was in the middle of the Atlantic, not “a few miles off the Irish coast”.

Another very telling fact, not mentioned in your article, is that the bottle was his mother’s parting gift to him of a bottle of Holy Water. It is clear that he would only have emptied the bottle for the message when he realised the ship was sinking and that he was not likely to survive. How did the bottle find its way to Dunkettle here in Glanmire, the nearest to his mother’s home, a year later? Were we not told by Himself, ‘Faith will move mountains’?