A teen’s message in a bottle, written 49 years ago in Massachusetts, has been found more than 1,000 miles away in the Bahamas.
Two men — brothers Clint and Evan Buffington — discovered the message tucked inside a glass bottle during a recent trip to the Caribbean. Then, with help from social media and a Boston journalist, they found the man who wrote the message in 1976 when he was 14 years old.
“I always think the most important thing about these messages is not how old they are or how far they’ve traveled — it’s the people on the other side,” Clint, a musician and avid hunter of messages in bottles, told Boston outlet WCVB of his desire to locate the writer.
In the message, Peter R. Thompson, who now lives in Leominster, had written, “I’m a ninth-grade student from Pentucket Regional Junior High School [in West Newbury]. This is a science experiment for I am in an oceanography course. Will you please send this back to the address at the bottom and say where you found it, what day and time, and how. This was launched by a Coast Guard ship in the month of May 1976.”
The PEOPLE App is now available in the Apple App Store! Download it now for the most binge-worthy celeb content, exclusive video clips, astrology updates and more!
After WCVB reporter Emily Maher tracked down Thompson, the Massachusetts man told her that he doesn’t remember writing the message but does remember taking the oceanography class five decades ago.
“It’s amazing. It’s almost 50 years later,” he said. “It’s a big surprise.”
In a Facebook post, Clint tried to put into perspective the magnitude of finding this particular message in a bottle.
“Now, to some, this may sound like a pretty ‘straightforward’ message — no romance, no pirate treasure map,” Clint wrote. “But just think what it meant to the 14-year-old kid … who sent it in the 70s! The dreams of where it would travel, where it might wind up, who might find it.”
“Well, after who knows how many trips around the North Atlantic, drifting past whales and cargo ships, shimmering under the northern lights, it wound up on a very sparsely inhabited out-island of the Bahamas and rested in the sun as world leaders and wars came and went, music and clothing styles rose and fell,” Clint continued.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
“Somewhere in there, my brother and I were born, grew up, went to school, got married, had kids,” he reflected. “And all that time, this message was waiting to be found. There’s way more going on with this message than you could ever imagine just by reading it!”
Read the full article here
