Bottle from the wreck of the City of Portland (Photo courtesy of Micah Philbrook) and Down East soda bottle found at Beauchamp Point, Rockport. (Photo by Charles H. Lagerbom)
Bottle from the wreck of the City of Portland (Photo courtesy of Micah Philbrook) and Down East soda bottle found at Beauchamp Point, Rockport. (Photo by Charles H. Lagerbom)
By Carolyn Zachary
Recovered bottles of different shapes and ages.
By Carolyn Zachary
Collection of bottles from different dives recovered at South End Beach in Rockland.
By Carolyn Zachary
Bottle found containing a bunch of matchsticks.
By Carolyn Zachary
Bottles found under the moorings at Beauchamp Point, Rockport.
By Carolyn Zachary
Bottle from the wreck of the City of Portland and Down East soda bottle found at Beauchamp Point, Rockport.
Photos by Micah Philbrook (left) and Charles H. Lagerbom
Collection of bottles from different dives recovered at South End Beach in Rockland.
Photo by Charles H. Lagerbom
Bottle found containing a bunch of matchsticks. Photo courtesy of Sean Kelly
People often ask what we find underwater when we scuba dive and when you mention bottles, some get this weird kind of gleam in their eye. At first, I didn’t understand. That is, until I started learning more about the history of bottles as well as their collectability as an underwater treasure. Who knew?
A collection of bottles is an assortment of stories, anecdotes and historical trivia, and for divers, that includes where and how you found them. Bottle collecting is nothing new; over 40 years ago, it was estimated there were three million bottle collectors in North America!
Bottles can also be quite valuable as well as historical — cultures have been making glass for over 3,500 years. Glass-blown bottles started appearing in Roman times. Here in America, colonial bottles and 19th century specimens are particularly sought after.
There is quite a market for these bottles and people pay top dollar for certain kinds or shapes or colors. That is why some divers take their bottle collecting waaay seriously. If they know of certain bottle dumps or great collecting areas, it is kept as secret as the plans for D-Day or the Manhattan Project. Some have called this intense passion the “Bottle Bug.”
Collection of bottles from different dives recovered at South End Beach in Rockland. Photo by Charles H. Lagerbom
That’s because bottles can be quite profitable, but you need to know what to look for or how to recognize what you have found. Bottle identification and price guides can be purchased. There is even an Antique Bottle and Glass Collector monthly magazine and website supported by the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors (https://www.fohbc.org/bottles-extras/about/).
While I don’t think I have a full-blown case of the Bottle Bug, I do appreciate their history and the excitement of finding a cool-looking one underwater. And there are lots of them out there. We have found bottles or fragments at just about every dive site.
Some of the more productive areas to find bottles are usually around moorings in harbors, off piers and around bridges. Some waterfronts also had buildings that overlooked the water, and bottles and trash tended to be tossed out the window for disposal.
At anchorages, boaters tend to deposit their empties overboard. We have found numerous beer, wine, soda and even champagne bottles around moorings at South End Beach in Rockland or at Beauchamp Point in Rockport or off the Searsport Town dock. And some of the bottles were not empty.
Bottle found containing a bunch of matchsticks. Photo courtesy of Sean Kelly
At Beauchamp Point, a fellow Aqua-Nut diver came across a small, old-time pharmacy bottle with something in it. After cleaning and opening it, he discovered it was chock-full of old-time match sticks.
To be a serious bottle collector, however, you need to be “bottle ready” when you dive. I made that mistake once on a trip to southern Maine for a dive on the tug wreck off Commercial Street in Portland. I did not know there would be bottles galore and I had not thought to bring a mesh bag with me. So I held on to as many finds as I could for most of the dive. Not effective and not efficient at all!
Some quick tips for a found bottle include checking its top or lip, its overall shape and seams, as well as its color. These are all indicators of manufacture, but more importantly, they point to the bottle’s potential age. Let’s start with the lip or top of the bottle. Modern bottles have a machined tool ridge around the top onto which the bottle cap is crimped.
If the lip on your found bottle looks rough, it might have been applied by hand rather than machine tooled. This may make it older and is known as a sheared lip, which is sharply defined on the edges and usually not level. Over the years, the hand-applied lip did get smoother, but still never really became uniform with the rest of the bottle.
Following the applied lip, there was a transition period where the blob top, Hutchison stopper, Codd bottles and other lips came and went before the top of the bottle was finally standardized. This happened around the turn of the 20th century.
Recovered bottles of different shapes and ages. Photos courtesy of Micah Philbrook
The shape of the bottle is the next indicator. Colonial bottles were free-blown and worked by hand. As a result, they appear irregularly shaped, lacking symmetry or any mold marks or lines. The older ones are even referred to as onion bottles because of their shape.
With the Industrial Revolution, bottle manufacturers began using partial molds to blow their glass into, which tended to produce distinct lines on the sides and bottom. Half-molds eventually gave way to more intricate three-piece molds, all of which help date the bottle.
Follow the bottle’s seams. The longer they are, the more recent the bottle. Seam lines eventually extended the entire length of the bottle as they became standardized by 1910.
Some bottle shapes are very easy to identify, especially with raised lettering or markings. A Down East root-beer bottle is quite distinctive with its labeling. So is the universally known and recognizable shape of the classic Coca Cola bottle.
The third indicator is color. Here in New England, bottles prior to 1860 tend to exhibit more traditional green and black glass. This is especially true of colonial bottles, because British glass factory furnaces were fired with coal, which produced a smoky green to dark black colored glass. The French fired their furnaces with wood, so French colonial glass tended to be bluer and clearer.
Besides color, the consistency of the glass should also be checked. Bottles with imperfections such as bubbles may indicate age or having been handmade rather than by machine.
The years 1860 to 1910 probably saw the widest diversity of color, shape, lip and overall size for glass bottles. Those five decades are the sweet-spot and collectible eras for many who dive for bottles. The variety of colors, shapes and sizes is truly astounding. But the glory days ended and from 1910 onward, mass-produced bottles look pretty similar to what we use today.
We have had great luck finding bottles at some of our dive sites. Beauchamp Point in Rockport is one. Out around the moorings at depths of about 30 to 40 feet, there are always bottles to be seen, often in clumps of four or five.
Bottles found under the moorings at Beauchamp Point, Rockport. Photo by Charles H. Lagerbom
Some of our Aqua-Nuts are just naturals at finding bottles. We call them the “Bottle Whisperers.” One in particular has an eagle eye to spot them left and right among the weeds and bottom muck. He has come up with some of the most unique bottles we have seen, including one from the City of Portland passenger steamer wreck off Owls Head.
Good times to collect bottles are during the off-season or after passing storms have shifted and rearranged the bottom. Also after big tidal changes. Some bottle divers even use a long rod to probe soft bottom areas.
Submerged bottles often get crusted over with marine life, and filled with sand and muck and sometimes living critters. I saw one diver carry a stainless steel pot scrubber with him when he went looking for bottles. He would carefully scrape the bottle while underwater to see if it was worth adding to his carry bag.
Often, I just wait until I get home to clean up any bottles I find. You need to deal with any barnacles or algae growth; this might require some effort. Soap and water or a bit of bleach might help, but more likely a brush or scraper might be in order. Some collectors might leave a bit of the growth on the bottle for character or for show, as in having a visible reminder that it was diver-collected.
Once bitten, there is no escaping the Bottle Bug, what with the thrill of the hunt, the excitement of the find, the task of cleaning it up, and the joy of showing it off. But you need to attend to the bottle cleaning in a timely manner, or else you might end up with a stinking mess. A garage smelling like low tide never goes over well with the wife.
Charles Lagerbom teaches AP U.S. History at Belfast Area High School and lives in Northport. He is author of “Whaling in Maine” and “Maine to Cape Horn,” available through Historypress.com.
