Galway Duo Crack 3-Word SOS, Inisheer Beach Bottle Sparks Taiwan Mystery

Galway friends Chris Hurley and Matthew Laming unearthed a wax-sealed glass bottle marked with a three-word SOS on Inisheer Beach, colliding Irish rock pools with missing Taiwanese ship lore. Trending queries like âWhat happens if you find a message in a bottle?â and âCan police trace SOS messages?â swirl as the pair smash open the bottle in a pub. âWe thought it was a hoax and were going to give it to a child to have fun opening it,â Chris confessed, only for internet sleuths to link their discovery to the vanished Yong Yu Sing No. 18.
After pub-side bottle smashing revealed the cryptic note, Reddit detectives and coast guards converged, linking âHelp, Hello, SOSâ to a missing crew lost since December 2020. Searches for âHas anyone found real SOS bottles?â and âHow do police handle found messages?â spiked as the saga went viral, conjuring the image of a floral-scented waxed bottle from the Aran Islands sparking a cross-ocean manhunt. As Chris quipped, âLoads of people were saying, âYou have to hand it in to the authorities.ââ
The bottleâs message, partially in Indonesian and Chinese, triggered national news in Taiwan and suspicions about the fate of the Yong Yu Xing No. 18, a ship found eerily adrift with no crew four years ago.