Manuscript Found in a Bottle by Edgar Allan Poe

Step aboard… if you dare.

This is Manuscript Found in a Bottle, Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling nautical tale of shipwreck, spectral vessels, and the slow descent into madness at sea.

First published in 1833, this eerie story launched Poe’s literary career and set the tone for generations of gothic horror to come.

In this atmospheric reading, you’ll be swept into a nightmarish voyage filled with mystery, dread, and a creeping sense of doom.

🌊A tale of isolation, insanity, and the supernatural – all aboard a ghost ship no one can escape.

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🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
One of my favorite memories of scaring myself as a
child was getting a compilation book of Edgar Allan Poe's
stories from my elementary school library. It brought me so
much fear and so much excitement. I remember running home

(00:24):
from school with that book in my backpack as the
sky was dark and a storm was coming. I was
in my childhood living room, but I wasn't alone. I
had a pizza and the books of Poe. Every so

(00:46):
often I'll bring you a tale of Poe, and I
hope it gives you that scary fun sense, just the
same as it does for me. When the clock strikes midnight,
the story will begin. Manuscript found in a bottle by

(01:45):
Edgar Allan Poe. Of my country and of my family,
I have little to say. Ill usage and length of
years have driven me from the one and estranged me
from the other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of

(02:08):
no common order, and a contemplative turn of mind enabled
me to methodize the stores which early study very diligently
garnered up. Beyond all things, the works of the German
moralists gave me great delight, not from any ill advised

(02:29):
admiration of their eloquent madness. But from the ease with
which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect
their falsenies, I have often been reproached with the aridity
of my genius. A deficiency of imagination has been imputed

(02:50):
to me as a crime, and the pyrrhism of my
opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a
strong relish for physical philosophy has I fear tinctured my
mind with a very common error of this age. I

(03:13):
mean the habit of referring occurrences even the least susceptible
of such reference to the principles of that science. Upon
the whole, No person could be less liable than myself
to be led away from the severe precincts of truth
by the ignis fatui of superstition. I have thought proper

(03:37):
to premise thus much less the incredible tale I have
to tell should be considered rather the raving of a
crude imagination than the positive experience of a mind to
which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter
and a nullity. After many years spent in foreign travel,

(04:01):
I sailed in the year eighteen something or other from
the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island
of Java, on a voyage to the archipelago of the
Sunda Islands. I went as passenger, having no other inducement

(04:22):
than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me like
a fiend. Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about
four hundred tons copper, fastened and built at Bombay of
Malabar Teak. She was freighted with cotton, wool and oil

(04:43):
from the Lashadive Islands. We had also on board choir
jagori ghi, cocoa nuts, and a few cases of opium.
The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consecut quinley crank.
We got under way with a mere breath of wind,

(05:05):
and for many days stood along the eastern coast of Java,
without any other incident to beguile the monotony of our
course than the occasional meeting with some of the small
grabs of the archipelago to which we were bound. One evening,
leaning over taffrail, I observed a very singular, isolated cloud

(05:31):
to the northwest. It was remarkable as well for its color,
as from its being the first we had seen since
our departure from Batavia. I watched it attentively until sunset,
when it spread all at once to the eastward and westward,
girding in the horizon with a narrow strip of vapor

(05:55):
and looking like a long line of low beach. My
notice was soon afterwards attracted by the dusker appearance of
the moon and the peculiar character of the sea. The
latter was undergoing a rapid change, and the water seemed
more than usually transparent, although I could distinctly see the bottom.

(06:20):
Yet heaving the lead, I found the ship in fifteen fathoms.
The air now became intolerably hot, and was loaded with
spiral exhalations, similar to those arising from heated iron. As
night came on, every breath of wind died away, and

(06:44):
a more entire calm. It is impossible to conceive the
flame of a candle burned upon the poop without the
least perceptible motion, and a long hair held between the
finger and thumb hung without the possibility of detecting a vibration. However,

(07:07):
as the captain said, he could perceive no indication of danger,
and as we were drifting in bodily to shore, he
ordered the sails to be furled, and the anchor let go.
No watch was set, and the crew, consisting principally of malaise,

(07:28):
stretched themselves deliberately upon deck, not without a full presentiment
of evil. Indeed, every appearance warranted me in apprehending a simoum.
I told the captain my fears, but he paid no
attention to what I said, and left me without deigning

(07:51):
to give a reply. My uneasiness, however, prevented me from sleeping,
and about midnight, I went up upon deck. As I
placed my foot upon the upper step of the companion ladder,
I was startled with a loud, humming noise, like that

(08:13):
occasioned by the rapid revolution of a mill wheel, And
before I could ascertain its meaning, I found the ship
quivering to its center. In the next instant, a wilderness
of foam hurled us upon our beamends, and rushing over
us fore and aft, swept the entire decks from stem

(08:37):
to stern. The extreme fury of the blast proved in
a great measure the salvation of the ship, Although completely
water logged, yet as all her masts had gone by
the board, she rose after a minute heavily from the sea.
And staggering awhile beneath the immense pressure of the tempest.

(09:01):
Finally righted, by what miracle I escaped destruction. It is
impossible to say Stunned by the shock of the water,
I found myself upon recovery, jammed in between the stern
post and rudder. With great difficulty, I gained my feet, and,

(09:23):
looking dizzily around, was at first struck with the idea
of our being among breakers so terrific. Beyond the wildest
imagination was the whirlpool of mountainous and foaming ocean within
which we were engulfed. After a while I heard the
voice of an old Swede who had shipped with us

(09:46):
at the moment of our leaving port. I halloed to
him with all my strength, and presently he came reeling aft.
We soon discovered that we were the sole survivors of
the accident. All on deck, with the exception of ourselves,
had been swept overboard, and the captain and mates must

(10:10):
have perished as they slept, for the cabins were deluged
with water. Without assistance, we could expect to do little
for the security of the ship, and our exertions were
at first paralyzed by the momentary expectation of going down.

(10:30):
Our cable had, of course parted like pack thread at
the first breath of the hurricane, or we should have
been instantaneously overwhelmed. We scudded with frightful velocity before the
sea and the water made clear breeches over us. The
framework of our stern was shattered excessively, and in almost

(10:53):
every respect we had received considerable injury. But to our
extreme joy, we found the pumps unchoked, and that we
had made no great shifting of our ballast. The main
fury of the simoom had already blown over, and we

(11:14):
apprehended little danger from the violence of the wind. But
we looked forward to its total cessation with dismay, well,
believing that in our shattered condition we should inevitably perish
in the tremendous swell which would ensue. But this very

(11:36):
apprehension seemed by no means likely to be soon verified.
For five entire days and nights, during which our only
substance was a small quantity of jaggery procured with great
difficulty from the forecastle, the hulk flew at a rate

(11:57):
defying computation, before or rapidly succeeding flaws of wind, which,
without equaling the first violence of the Simoom, were still
more terrific than any tempest I had before encountered. Our
course for the first four days was with trifling variations

(12:19):
southeast and by south, and we must have run down
the coast of New Holland. On the fifth day, the
cold became extreme. Although the wind had hauled round a
point more to the northward, the sun arose with a
sickly yellow luster and clambered a very few degrees above

(12:41):
the horizon, emitting no decisive light. There were no clouds
whatever apparent. Yet the wind was upon the increase, and
blew with a fitful and unsteady fury. About noon, as
nearly as we could guess, our attention was again arrested

(13:01):
by the appearance of the sun. It gave out no
light properly so called, but a dull and sullen glow,
unaccompanied by any ray. Just before sinking within the turgid sea,
its central fires suddenly went out, as if hurriedly extinguished

(13:23):
by some unaccountable power. It was a dim, silver like
rim alone as it rushed down the unfathomable ocean. We
waited in vain for the arrival of the sixth day.
That day to me has not yet arrived. To the

(13:44):
Swede never did arrive. Thenceforward we were enshrouded in pitchy darkness,
so that we could not have seen an object. At
twenty paces from the ship. Eternal night continued to envelop us,
all relieved by the phosphoric sea brilliancy to which we

(14:06):
had been accustomed in the tropics. We observed too, that
although the tempest continued to rage with unabated violence, there
was no longer to be discovered the usual appearance of
surf or foam which had hitherto attended us. All around

(14:27):
was horror and thick gloom, and a black, sweltering desert
of ebony. Superstitious terror crept by degrees into the spirit
of the old Swede, and my own soul was wrapped
up in silent wonder. We neglected all care of the
ship as worse than useless, and securing ourselves as well

(14:51):
as possible to the stump of the mizenmast looked out
bitterly into the world of ocean. We had no means
of calculating time, nor could we form any guess of
our situation. We were, however, well aware of having made
farther to the southward than any previous navigators, and felt

(15:15):
extreme amazement at not meeting with the usual impediments of ice.
In the meantime, every moment threatened to be our last,
every mountainous billow hurried to overwhelm us. The swell surpassed
anything I had imagined possible, and that we were not

(15:37):
instantly buried is a miracle. My companion spoke of the
lightness of our cargo and reminded me of the excellent
qualities of our ship. But I could not help feeling
the utter hopelessness of hope itself, and prepared myself gloomily
for that death, which I thought nothing could differ beyond

(15:59):
an hour. As with every knot of way the ship made,
the swelling of the black stupendous seas became more dismally appalling.
At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond
the albatross. At times became dizzy with the velocity of

(16:20):
our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew
stagnant and no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken.
We were at the bottom of one of these abysses,
when a quick scream from my companion broke fearfully upon
the night. See see, cried he, shrieking in my ears,

(16:46):
Almighty God, see see. As he spoke, I became aware
of a dull, sullen glare of red light which streamed
down the sides of the vast chasm where there we lay,
and threw a fitful brilliancy upon our deck. Casting my

(17:07):
eyes upwards, I beheld a spectacle which froze the current
of my blood. At a terrific height, directly above us,
and upon the very verge of the precipitous descent, hovered
a gigantic ship of nearly four thousand tons. Although upreared

(17:29):
upon the summit of a wave of more than a
hundred times her own altitude, her apparent size still exceeded
that of any ship of the Line or East Indiaman
in existence. Her huge hull was a deep, dingy black,
unrelieved by any of the customary carvings of a ship.

(17:52):
A single row of brass cannon protruded from her open
ports and dashed off from their polished surfaces the fires
of innumerable battle lanterns, which swung to and fro about
her rigging. But what mainly inspired us with horror and

(18:13):
astonishment was that she bore up under a press of sail,
in the very teeth of that supernatural sea and of
that ungovernable hurricane. When we first discovered her, her stupendous
boughs were alone to be seen as she rose up,

(18:35):
like a demon of the deep, slowly from the dim
and horrible gulf beyond her. For a moment of intense terror,
she paused upon the giddy pinnacle, as if in contemplation
of her own sublimity, then trembled and tottered and came down.

(18:59):
At this instant, I know not what sudden self possession
came over my spirit. Staggering as far aft as I could,
I awaited fearlessly the ruin that was to overwhelm our
own vessel was at length, ceasing from her struggles and

(19:19):
sinking with her head to the sea. The shock of
the descending mass struck her consequently in that portion of
her frame which was already under water, and the inevitable
result was to hurl me in the irresistible violence upon
the rigging of the Stranger. As I fell, the ship

(19:41):
hove in stays and went about, and to the confusion
ensuing I attributed my escape from the notice of the crew.
With little difficulty. I made my way unperceived to the
main hatchway, which was partially open, and soon found an
opportunity of secreting myself in the hold. Why I did so,

(20:06):
I can hardly tell. A nameless and indefinite sense of awe,
which at first sight of the navigators of the ship
had taken hold of my mind, was perhaps the principle
of my concealment. I was unwilling to trust myself with
a race of people who had offered to the cursory

(20:26):
glance I had taken so many points of vague novelty,
doubt and apprehension. I therefore thought proper to contrive a
hiding place in the hold. This I did by removing
a small portion of the shifting boards in such a
manner as to afford me a convenient retreat between the

(20:48):
huge timbers of the ship. I had scarcely completed my
work when a footstep in the hold forced me to
make use of it. A man passed by my place
of concealment with a feeble and unsteady gait. I could
not see his face, but had an opportunity of observing

(21:10):
his general appearance. There was about it an evidence of
great age and infirmity. His knees tottered beneath a load
of years, and his entire frame quivered under the burthen.
He muttered to himself in a low, broken tone, some

(21:30):
words of a language which I could not understand, and
groped in a corner among a pile of singular looking
instruments and decayed charts of navigation. His manner was a
wild mixture of the peevishness of second childhood and the
solemn dignity of a god. He at length went on deck,

(21:54):
and I saw him no more. A feeling for which
I have no name has taken possession of my soul,
a sensation which will admit of no analysis, to which
the lesson of by gone time are inadequate, and for
which I fear futurity itself will offer me no key

(22:19):
to a mind constituted like my own. The latter consideration
is an evil I shall never I know that I
shall never be satisfied with regard to the nature of
my conceptions. Yet it is not wonderful that these conceptions
are indefinite, since they have their own origin in sources

(22:42):
so utterly novel. A new sense, a new entity, is
added to my soul. It is long since I first
trod the deck of this terrible ship, and the rays
of my destiny are I think, gathering to a focus
incomprehensible men wrapped up in meditations of a kind which

(23:06):
I cannot divine. They pass me by unnoticed. Concealment is
utter folly on my part, for the people will not see.
It was but just now that I passed directly before
the eyes of the mate. It was no long while
ago that I ventured into the captain's own private cabin

(23:29):
and took thence the materials with which I write and
have written. I shall, from time to time continue this journal.
It is true that I may not find an opportunity
of transmitting it to the world, but I will not
fail to make the endeavor. At the last moment, I

(23:50):
will enclose the message in a bottle and cast it
within the sea. An incident has occurred which has given
me new room for meditation. Are such things the operations
of ungoverned chance. I had ventured upon deck and thrown

(24:11):
myself down without attracting any notice. Among a pile of
ratlin stuff and old sails in the bottom of the yawl.
While musing upon the singularity of my fate, I unwittingly
daubed with a tar brush the edges of a neatly
folded studding sail, which lay near me on a barrel.

(24:37):
The studding sail is now bent upon the ship, and
the thoughtless touches of the brush are spread out into
the word discovery. I have made many observations lately upon
the structure of the vessel. Although well armed, she is
not I think a ship of war. Her rigging, build

(25:01):
and general equipment all negative a supposition of this kind.
What she is not, I can easily perceive what she is.
I fear it is impossible to say. I know not
how it is. But in scrutinizing her strange model and
singular cast of spars, her huge size and overgrown suits

(25:27):
of canvas, her severely simple bow and antiquated stern, there
will occasionally flash across my mind a sensation of familiar things,
And there is always mixed up with such indistinct shadows
of recollection, an unaccountable memory of old foreign chronicles, and

(25:51):
ages long ago. I have been looking at the timbers
of the ship. She is built of a material to
which I am a stranger. There is a peculiar character
about the wood which strikes me as rendering it unfit
for the purpose to which it has been applied. I

(26:12):
mean its extreme porousness. Considered independently of the worm eaten
condition which is consequence of navigation in these seas, and
apart from the rottenness attendant upon age, it will appear
perhaps an observation somewhat over curious. But this wood has

(26:34):
every characteristic of Spanish oak, if Spanish oak were distended
or swelled by any unnatural means. In reading the above sentence,
a curious opathem of an old, weather beaten Dutch navigator
comes full upon my recollection. It is as sure he

(26:59):
was wont to say, when any doubt was entertained of
his veracity, as sure as there is a sea where
the ship itself will grow in bulk like the living
body of the seamen. About an hour ago I made
bold to thrust myself among a group of the crew.

(27:21):
They paid me no manner of attention, and although I
stood in the very midst of them, all seemed utterly
unconscious of my presence, like the one I had at
first seen in the hold. They all bore about them
the marks of a hoary old age. Their knees trembled

(27:43):
with infirmity, their shoulders were bent double with decreptitude. Their
shriveled skins rattled in the wind. Their voices were low,
tremulous and broken. Their eyes glistened with the room of years,
and their gray hairs streamed terribly in the tempest. Around them.

(28:07):
On every part of the deck lay scattered mathematical instruments
of the most quaint and obsolete construction. I mentioned some
time ago the bending of a studding sail. From that period,
the ship, being thrown dead off the wind, was held

(28:28):
her terrific course due south, with every rag of canvas
packed upon her, from her trucks to her lower studding
sail booms, and rolling every moment her top gallant yard
arms into the most appalling hell of water, which it
can enter into the mind of a man to imagine,

(28:50):
I have just left the deck, where I find it
impossible to maintain a footing. Although the crew seem to
experience little inconvenience, it appears to me a miracle of
miracles that our enormous bulk is not buried up once
and forever. We are surely doomed to hover continually upon

(29:12):
the brink of eternity without taking a final plunge into
the abyss from billows a thousand times more stupendous than
any I have ever seen. We glide away with the
facility of the arrowy seagull, and the colossal waters rear
their heads above us, like demons of the deep, but

(29:37):
like demons confined to simple threats and forbidden to destroy.
I am led to attribute these frequent escapes to the
only natural cause which can account for such effect. I
must suppose the ship to be within the influence of
some strong current or impetuous undertow. I have seen the

(30:01):
captain face to face, and in his own cabin, but
as I expected, he paid me no attention. Although in
his appearance there is to a casual observer nothing which
might bespeak him more or less than man. Still a
feeling of irrepressible reverence and awe mingled with the sensation

(30:26):
of wonder with which I regarded him. In stature, he
is nearly my own height, that is about five feet
eight inches. He is of a well knit and compact
frame of body, neither robust nor remarkably otherwise. But it
is the singularity of the expression which reigns upon the face.

(30:51):
It is the intense, the wonderful, the thrilling evidence of
old age, so utter, so extreme, which excites within my
spirit a sense, a sentiment ineffable. His forehead, although little wrinkled,
seemed to bear upon it the stamp of a myriad
of years. His gray hairs are records of the past,

(31:15):
and his grayer eyes are sybils of the future. The
cabin floor was thickly strewn with strange, iron clasped folios
and moldering instruments of science and obsolete, long forgotten charts.
His head was bowed upon his hands, and he poured

(31:35):
with a fiery, unquiet eye over a paper which I
took to be a commission, and which, at all events
bore the signature of a monarch. He muttered to himself,
as did the first seamen, whom I saw in the hold,
some low, peevish syllables of a foreign tongue. And although

(31:59):
the speaker was close at my elbow, yet his voice
seemed to reach my ears. From the distance of a mile.
The ship and all in it are imbued with the
spirit of eld. The crew glide to and fro like
the ghosts of buried centuries. Their eyes have an eager
and uneasy meaning. And when their figures fall athwart my

(32:24):
path in the wild glare of the battle lanterns, I
feel as I have never felt before, although I have
been all my life a dealer in antiquities, and imbibed
the shadows of fallen columns at Balbec and Tadmore and Persepolis,
until my very soul has become a ruin. When I

(32:48):
look around me, I feel ashamed of my former apprehensions.
If I trembled at the blast which hitherto attended us,
shall I not stand aghast at warring of the wind
and ocean to convey any idea of which the words
tornado and simoom are trivial and ineffective. All in the

(33:11):
immediate vicinity of the ship is the blackness of eternal
night and a chaos of foamless water. But about a
league on either side of us may be seen indistinctly,
and at intervals stupendous ramparts of ice towering away into

(33:32):
the desolate sky and looking like the walls of the
universe as I imagined, the ship proves to be in
a current, if that appellation can properly be given to
a tide which, howling and shrieking by the white ice,
thunders on to the southward with a velocity like the

(33:54):
headlong dashing of a cataract. To conceive the horror of
my sensation is, I presume, utterly impossible. Yet a curiosity
to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions predominates even
over my despair, and will reconcile me the most hideous

(34:16):
aspect of death. It is evident that we are hurrying
onwards to some exciting knowledge, some never to be imparted
secret whose attainment is destruction. Perhaps this current leads us
to the Southern Pole itself. It must be confessed that

(34:38):
a supposition apparently so wild, has every probability in its favor.
The crew pace the deck with unquiet and tremulous step,
But there is upon their countenances an expression more of
the eagerness of hope than of the apathy of despair.

(34:59):
In the sid meantime, the wind is still in our poop,
and as we carry a crowd of canvas. The ship
is at times lifted bodily from out the sea. Oh, horror,
upon horror, the ice open suddenly to the right and
to the left, and we are whirling dizzily in immense

(35:22):
concentric circles round and round the borders of a gigantic amphitheater,
the summit of whose walls is lost in the darkness
and the distance. But little time will be left me
to ponder upon my destiny. The circles rapidly grow small.

(35:42):
We are plunging madly within the grasp of the whirlpool,
and amid a roaring and bellowing and shrieking of ocean
and of tempest, the ship is quivering, Oh God, and
going down,