Castaways rescued by a message in a bottle?

Question

Has there ever been a time when people were rescued by sending out a message in a bottle to drift across the sea?

• The "bottle" doesn't have to be an actual bottle. It could be a box, a cask, a barrel, any kind of physical item bearing a message.
• It does have to drift across the sea, though. There was an incident where some people off the shore of Costa Rica tied a message to a long line dragging behind a fishing boat -- that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a case where the message was carried by the sea.

Answer 1

Not quite the traditional castaway rescue, but there was the case of the Meermin slave mutiny, where the imprisoned slavers used a message in a bottle to alert shore forces to the slave mutiny, resulting in the defeat of the slaves and rescue of the slavers.

There's also the case of Chunosuke Matsuyama, where a shipwrecked Japanese seaman sent a message in a bottle in 1784. Unfortunately, it was not discovered until 1935; ironically in the village of his birth.

Other stories can be found in Wikipedia, although none tell of castaways actually rescued because of a message in a bottle. It seems to be more a tradition of literature...