A Tale of Two Bottles

These two bottles were recovered from alongside the shed when Eddie Gilbert and Ken Snowdon were doing their major overhaul of the building last summer. The bottles can be considered bonuses to the fabulous work they did restoring the shed to a more than useful condition.

Embossed: Vincent Hathaway & Co Boston Ginger Ale

Embossed: ROSS BELFAST

The unique feature of both of these bottles is the rounded base. Kind of makes you wonder how one would use these. Once open, they pretty well had to be poured into a tankard, mug, or glass, or held in the hand. So why not use a flat base?

Rouded bases were designed to do the opposite of most bottles - to ensure that the bottle was not left standing upright. The point behind the rounded bottom was to make sure the bottle was left lying on its' side so that the wired down cork would not dry out and shrink, allowing the contents to lose carbonation and/or evaporate. The typical rounded base bottle was made of thick heavy glass, usually mouth blown, and used for carbonated soda, mineral water, and in particular, ginger ale. Some rounded bottoms actually have a small flattened area in the middle of the base that permitted the user to stand the bottle upright, although somewhat precariously. Those particular bottles are referred to as "club" or "tenpin" in shape or as "semirounded" or "egg shaped".

These type bottles that Eddie and Ken recovered are commonly referred to as 'round bottom sodas' or as "ballast bottles" since it is believed, and may even have some truth to it, that many of them were imported from England as ballast weight in ships returning to Canada and the US.

A common variation is the 'torpedo' bottle which is distinctly more pointed on the bottom with a bulging amphora like body. A couple of pictures of these appear a little later in this article. The torpedo style was first used in England at least as early as 1809 when a patent was granted to William F Hamilton. These bottle types are often referred to as "Hamiltons" by English bottle collectors, but are also referred to as "bombs". In most of the material I located, round bottom bottles and 'torpedoes' were lumped together as 'round bottom sodas' for simplicity. with "soda" being very much an American derived appelation.

The vast majority of rounded or pointed base bottles were designed and used for non-alcoholic carbonated beverages. However, as with most types of bottles, there were exceptions. Some mid 19th century liquor flasks came with rounded bases, but the bottles themselves were flattened in cross section. There were oddities such as this bottle which has a rounded base like the soda bottles but has a flattened side so that the bottle will not roll on a flat surface. In addition the embossed name is upside down as these types were generally inserted into a metal appliance that allowed for controlled dispensing of the contents. The bottle pictured below was used for disinfectant.

Round bottom and torpedo bottles were typically produced in a two piece mold where the neck, shoulder, body and entire base (or what passes for a base for the bottle collecting purist) were produced by the two halves of the mold. That makes them simply a rounded version of a type of molding known as "hinge" molding, and they exhibit one continuous seam that runs from one side of the body, around the base, and up the other other side. With the exception of round bottom soda bottles, the majority of the true two-piece mold bottles largely disappeared during the 1870's.

The seams are visible on the two 'shed' bottles however on the Ross bottle it goes down one side, under the base and up the other side, disappearing completely in the vicinity of the neck of the bottle.

It is said that the majority of these type bottles were imported from Great Britain and were frequently, as in our two examples, embossed with the company name. This is true for both our examples however as the Hathaway bottle identifies itself as originating in Boston, it is possible that it was of North American manufacture, or was made overseas for a US bottleer. These type bottles were advertised in the catalogues of US bottle makers during the early 20th century as "round bottom ginger ale bottle" (Illinois Glass Co: 1903, 1908, 1911)

The typical round bottom soda bottlee was made, as mentioned earlier, of thick heavy glass in order to withstand the carbonation pressures of soda, mineral water and in particular, ginger ale. The bottles also had to survive the rigours of high pressure bottling processes as well as the extensive post-bottling handling, especially since soda water bottles were typically re-used many times. Witness the difference in the amount of wear on our two bottles. In fact many of them had embossed on their side the caption "This bottle is not to be sold". The heavy glass generally had a greenish aqua colour and some of these things weighed in at just over a pound.

The 'finish' (an arcane bottle term for "neck" from what I can gather) on the majority of these bottles was a thick heavy blob which allowed for the wiring down of a cork closure, though other 'finishes' were occasionally noted, including a crown cap finish. (For non bottle afficianados - a bottle cap)

As exciting as it is to we the un-bottle-educated, or the "not bottle passionate", the Ross bottle is apparently classified as a "very common and typical example" that was imported. (And now I quote directly from a bottle collector - the reader can kind of, sort of, maybe guess what the writer means) "It has an applied finish that is a cross section between a blob, (large and one part), and the oil style (flattened and tapered outside suface), was blown in a true two-piece mold, and exhibits no apparent mold air venting evidence"

If American made the bottle could be dated as having been manufactured in the 1865 to 1880 era. However it is likely that it was made in the late 19th century as European bottle making techniques were a decade or two behind American ones.

Though foreign made, these bottles were imported by the millions from the mid 19th century until well into the 20th and are very commonly found on late 19th to early 20th century historic sites, though they can date back to the 1870's. These type of bottles, and the Ross in particular, are found throughout the world but are particularly prevalent in British Commonwealth nations such as Canada, Australia, and India, which is pretty much in keeping with British colonial policies of the time.

The majority of mouth-blown round bottom bottles date from the 1870's to the 1910's. Toward the end of the era of popularity for these bottles a crown cap (bottle cap) accepting finish (neck) was relatively common (1895 - 1897 and on into the early 20th century) although with this type of closure, the necessity for the round bottom - to keep the cork wet, was made irrelevant.

The closure/finish combination was of critical importance to the bottling of carbonated soda waters. The closure had to be simple for people to use, cheap to produce, and of course be effective in not releasing the contents or the carbonation until final consumption.

Ok, how we've learned a bit about the bottles themselves, how did one serve the ginger ale they contained? Was it just opened and poured off into other drinking utensils? Sucked from the bottle? Not very genteel, so apparently not. There were devices made specifically to hold these round bottom bottles. Some of them held single bottles, while there were cruets made which could seve the bottles at the table.

A cruet for two typical torpedo bottles



A couple of other examples of round bottom bottle cruets

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But what about our two bottles specifically? Who and what were the Ross and Hathaway companies? We have already read that the Ross bottles are as common as dirt, so the bottler must have been reasonably large. In fact, several Ross Ginger Ale advertisements have been located and are reproduced here:

Unfortunately, I have been unable to (so far) uncover anything about either Ross or Hathaway and their ginger ales.

They were not alone as purveyors of ginger ale however.

A small advertisement, date unknown ...earlier one should think than the one below.