In 1833, MS. Found in a Bottle (Message found in a bottle) won first prize in the Baltimore Saturday Visitor. Some speculate
that this work of Poe's was inspired by Samuel Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," but Poe himself made a note at the end of the piece in which he makes reference to a Mercator map. A Mercator map of the period featured a black mountain at one of the Earth's poles. In Poe's day, some believed this to be a possibility, and he used the same idea in his story. Today, the notion of a huge black mountain at one of the earth's poles is quaint, but Poe saw the need to excuse his use of it in his story by pointing out that it wasn't until many years after he'd written MS. Found in a
Bottle that he actually saw a Mercator map.
While in some ways this is a typical story of a ghost ship, it is also a story about the uknown. Before mankind found the means to traverse the poles--the Arctic and Antarctic--there was much speculation as to what could be there. If there could be anything living there, and indeed, what would happen to anyone living who went to one of the poles. To a great extent, this is Poe's attempt to answer this question.
He starts off with a skeptical scientist, who maintains his air of aloofness and rationality throughout the piece. Not once does the main
narrator lose his head, not even when it's wholly apparent that his ship is going down, and his only chance to live is to board a sort of Flying Dutchman.
The narrator takes this all into account from a scientific viewpoint. Even when the spectral ship begins to go south, the crew ignores him and it's probable he won't make it out of his predicament alive, he still does not panic. Through his calm, Poe hopes to increase the dread of the reader. The wise absorber of fiction must already know that science cannot prevail in the world of the supernatural. Despite this device, MS. Found in a Bottle will probably miss the mark to a modern day reader, who is more likely to be distracted by the facts of what the narrator sees as he goes towards the south pole, and begin a comparison against current knowledge to that degree.
Still, it does chill the heart to think that a man so doomed can hold out hope that reason can pull through in an unreasonable world. As this is supposed to be a message found in a bottle, the ending of this story is ambiguous, and leaves the reader wondering if the narrator is still traveling the high seas as a member of the ghost ship crew.