Our Susie

This simple little ship in a bottle has been around for as long as I can remember. It must be at least 70 years old, maybe more. Its colours have faded and the cap is rusty but the ship steams on. She is called ‘Our Susie’ and she has a number, so perhaps she was a real ship. As a child I was fascinated by the masts: how did they get into the bottle?
 
The family story about the ship, as I recall, was that it was made by an old sailor for a little girl. I have always assumed that was me, but as a child I lived on the Devon moors, nowhere near the coast, and you didn’t see many old sailors around there. So perhaps it was made for my mother? But she didn’t live near the coast as a child, either. Perhaps the ‘old sailor’ has been romanticised a bit. The one time Mum lived near the coast was as an adult during World War 2, when she lived in Cornwall. Perhaps the ‘old sailor’ was someone she met then.
 
We will never know who made ‘Our Susie’ and why. She serves as a reminder that memory is elusive and family stories sometimes unreliable.