Message in a Bottle: The Chad Pregracke Collection | Chad Pregracke’s Fascinating River Finds

By MEREDITH SIEMSEN 

"In the Figge Museum’s Message in a Bottle Collection, specially constructed boxes display the bottles, and a map shows where they were found.

In 1560, Queen Elizabeth I created the official position of “Uncorker of Ocean Bottles” to ensure that naval secrets sent through the ocean’s currents were not seen by undeserving eyes. She meant business. Any man, woman, or child caught opening a message from the sea was risking life and limb. Literally. Ew.

Chad Pregracke, by pure happenstance, is a modern-day finder of secrets gone adrift. In this age, capital punishment no longer applies for the uncorking of bottled messages, thank goodness, because Chad has found, read, and safeguarded scores of them over the past few decades..."

[Click here to read the full article from The Iowa Source.]