A message in a bottle written by Scottish primary school pupils in the 1980s has washed up more than 4,000 miles away in Florida.
The undated letter came from a class of children at Chapelpark Primary School in Forfar, which closed in 2007. The pupils, who are now in their mid-thirties, sent the message out into the North Sea while doing a project about pirates. They wrote that they wanted to see how far it would travel.
It was found by Ruth and Lee Huenniger, an American couple, while they were inspecting the destruction left after Hurricane Irma hit Florida in September last year.
Fiona Cargill, a teacher from Newtyle, Angus, is certain that the letter was written by pupils in one of her classes in the Eighties. She has narrowed it down to one group who had a family link to fishermen in Arbroath, which allowed the bottle to be dropped further out into the North Sea.
Mrs Cargill, 60, said: “It’s amazing. I’m sure that it was one of my primary 2/3 classes from the 1980s. I liked to teach a project on pirates because it helped develop a lot of different skills. One part of that would involve getting in groups, writing a letter and sending a message in a bottle out to sea and seeing if it ever came back.
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“I believe it is one class of primary 2/3 in particular because one of the children was related to a trawlerman in Arbroath who would take the bottle in their boat and throw it a bit further out so that it was less likely to just wash back ashore.
“Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find the pupil who wrote the letter, but looking back there’s an error [‘steert’] where they meant to write ‘street’ which I found quite amusing. Stupidly, I forgot to get them to date the letter, which really would have helped in narrowing it down.” The message inside the bottle, written by a pupil, explained that class P2/3 had been learning about pirates and sent the message to see how far it would travel. The paper was wrapped up in plastic to prevent water damage.
The bottle was found against a chain link fence 500 feet from the Atlantic Ocean in September.
Mrs Huenniger said that it was in remarkable condition when they found it and decided to write to the return address.
She said: “Lee found it after Hurricane Irma as he was checking for damage along a fence in our homeowner’s association. It was a large plastic bottle, like a Coke bottle and it was frosted over and you could not see very well inside. Lee could not get the top off of it but saw a corner of the paper near the neck of the bottle.
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“He was going to put in the recycle bin but decided to cut it open. It was several weeks, maybe six, before we received a response. We threw the original bottle out because we thought we were not going to hear anything else about the note.
“We were pleasantly surprised when we received the response from the previous teacher at the school that is no longer there. The bottle and note was amazingly well preserved to have been in the ocean for so long.”