In the late 1990s, a visitor to an exhibition on one of the barges at Hythe Quay showed a remarkable letter to the daughter of Maldon Museum and Archives Association member Ian Valentine.

It had been found in a bottle, and read: "Thursday night May 19th, Barge Cynthia. We are sinking. Rudderhead gone, boat and hatches. We are off the Weilingen. Have had distress signal flying all day. Farewell to all we love."

This poignant message names the crew: "Captain Gentry Maldon, T Carrington Mistley, J Brown London." It ends: "Should this be picked up please send on to G.G. Wantz Road, Maldon, Essex."

The Nursing Record and Hospital World of 1895 is the unlikely source of information on the fate of the Cynthia. '66 Wanty' is a misreading of 'G.G., Wantz'

The unknown visitor was never traced, and the Museum appealed for information on any descendants of Captain Gentry in Maldon, without success.

As noted in Mr Valentine's letter published in the Museum Newsletter of 2001, the Sailing Barge Cynthia was a 74 ton vessel built in 1864 at Brightlingsea, registered at Harwich and lost at sea in 1895.

Over the last twenty years it has become much easier to trace people and events thanks to the mass of information available on the Web, and I have managed to uncover some of this mystery.

Apollinaris was a hugely successful company with a London subsidiary.

The 1891 Census places the Gentry family at 17 Wantz Road (this number is now used by the Elim Pentecostal Church, so the house has presumably gone). Jeanette Gentry was there, aged 38, and four children: Alice, 13, Lilian, 11, Harry, 7 and Marjorie, 3 months.

The father is not listed, and since the Census only records people who were in a residence on the relevant night, he was probably at sea. Family history records name him as George James Gentry born 1848 and lost at sea in 1896, "in the North Sea USA". It's a year out, and the North Sea is NOT the USA, but he lived in Maldon and his family are listed as above. It also matches the "G.G." on the message.

Looking further I found an entry in The Nursing Record and Hospital World, June 15th 1895. This records that the bottle was picked up on the shore at Dunkirk (not far from Weilingen, which is just off Zeebrugge). It quotes the letter, and adds the information that the Cynthia had been bound for Remagen on the Rhine with a cargo of empty bottles for the Apollinaris Company. It had done over fifty voyages carrying bottles (a total of six million) and on this occasion was caught in a "dreadful gale".

I couldn't find living descendants, but census records and shared family trees tell us that the family moved away from Maldon. Jeanette died in 1919. In 1911 she was registered as a widow working as a dressmaker, living in Brixton with daughters Alice and Marjorie. Harry died in Southend in 1971. Lilian died in Surrey in 1958. An older daughter Flory, not listed in 1891, married in London in 1901.

Captain Gentry's family listed at Wantz Road in 1891.

Mr Valentine's letter rightly says how poignant it was that this well-written message should be penned in such desperate circumstances. With no lifeboat, no control of the rudder, and the hatches open to the sea pouring into the hold, these men were probably minutes from death. They were desperate for a chance to send a last loving message to their families and to spare them the agony of never knowing their fate.

The best vehicle lay in the empty bottles that were probably starting to float out of the waterlogged hold. The captain even found time to put a polite "please" in the request for the message to be forwarded.

The barge Cynthia is long gone, as is its crew and their families. But one thing survives – the company whose bottles they were transporting. Apollinaris was famous for mineral water and still produces water under this brand name, although if you want to look them up you will probably find them under the less romantic name of their current owners: Coca-Cola Deutschland. I wonder if the original message is still out there? Maldon Museum's "Penny Farthing" newsletters can be found on their website here.