Message in a Bottle: Girl’s Unique Pen Pal Request Found on Shore After Over Three Decades at Sea

The simple message, rolled up in an old Coke bottle battered by the elements and weathered by time, was discovered by a beachcomber at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Joshua Mendes, a Provincetown, Massachusetts resident exploring the beaches of Cape Cod, came across a unique find – a bottle with a message inside.

According to local media, upon opening the bottle, Mendes discovered a note, written by one Jenny Brown, an 11-year-old girl looking for a pen pal. Dated May 14, 1983, the message says simply “Please write me.” Included was a Jonesport post office box return address.

Mendes and his father Paul attempted to find Jenny, but to no avail.

If you’re still out there, Jenny Brown, someone beachcombing at the tip of Cape Cod has found the message that you placed in a bottle more than 36 years ago.https://t.co/adm94EdnFb

— FRANK 107.5 (@FRANKFMMAINE) 12 декабря 2019 г.

However, in a stroke of luck, after the story made the rounds in local media, the message’s author was found. Jenny, now a 48-year-old mother of two and resident of Jonesport, Maine, said she and a friend dropped bottles into the water on that day in 1983, with her friend’s bottle reportedly found just a day after she launched it one town over. Jenny’s, however, ended up traveling over 200 nautical miles, from Jonesport, Maine to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and spent decades hidden away before being discovered.

Jenny said she recognized the post office box listed in the letter, which she said had belonged to her mother for three decades. She would like to see the bottle for herself.

“I think it is pretty neat,” Kathy Brown, Jenny’s sister, said. “It’s been a long time to have something you threw in the water wash up. It took her by surprise,” she added.

With their origins dating back to the third century BC, messages in bottles have long become the stuff of lore and legend, with some messages making trips across vast oceans and taking decades to reach their destination. Earlier this year, a group of Brazilian students found an old bottle with a message written by a Soviet sailor. Earlier, a sailor from Alaska found another, half-a-century old bottle from a Russian sailor wishing whoever fished it out of waters warm greetings, “good health, long life and happy sailing.”