Ms. Found in a Bottle (1833)

This may be the first great short story Poe wrote. Submitted to a short story contest in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, it was unanimously awared the prize of $50.

In it, he introduced the imagery of the whirlpool into his fiction--an image that would be repeated in "Descent into the Maelstrom" and implied in his only novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

Explanation about a few items mentioned in the story may be helpful.

Pyrrhonism means extreme skepticism.

Malabar teak means teak taken from Malabar in southern India. The teak is probably Tectona grandis.

Coir, jaggeree, ghee—Coir is a coarse fiber taken from coconut shells. Jaggeree, or Jaggery, is an unrefined sugar, made either from sugarcane or the sap of the date palm tree. Ghee is a kind of clarified butter.

Crank means “incapable of carrying sail without being exposed to the danger of oversetting.” [Captain Cook Society]

The black rock mentioned in the editorial postscript refers to The Rupes Nigra. See Wikipedia, Map House of London, Strange Maps.

The epigraph, Qui n’a plus qu’un moment a vivre N’a plus rien a dissimuler, means He who will die has no reason to lie.

Read the story here: http://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/msfndg.htm