It doesn’t only happen in the movies! A mother in Florida recently found a piece of history, discovering a message in a bottle that is almost 80 years old and was washed ashore by Hurricane Debby.
Suzanne Flament-Smith shared her discovery with the Tampa Bay Times, noting that she found the bottle shortly after dropping her daughter off at school for volleyball practice.
While on a walk at Bayshore Boulevard, which runs along the water in Safety Harbor, Flament-Smith happened to stumble upon a patch of garbage on the ground brought ashore by Hurricane Debby, NewsNation reported.
As she was picking up the refuse, the Florida woman found an older-looking corked bottle that appeared to have a handwritten message inside.
On the piece of paper inside the bottle was written “United States Navy, Amphibious Training Base, Little Creek, Virginia,” with the date of March 4, 1945.
Taking the bottle home to see what she had discovered, Flament-Smith told the Times that she uncorked it and found a note folded in thirds along with an empty bullet casing, a circular hunk of metal, and a thin piece of wood.
The Times shared that the woman was able to get the letter out of the bottle after being forced to smash it open.
The note from last century was addressed to someone named “Lee” and was still somewhat legible.
“Recieved your letter yesterday, was glad to hear from you. So you got a little lit up the other day. Well that is a every day thing around here they have a bar and they have pretty good beer,” part of the message read.
The base referenced in the letter is known today as Little Creek and was newly built when the letter was penned. It sits along the Chesapeake Bay’s southern shore and was used for training with amphibious craft and assault tactics.
The Navy shares that a few hundred thousand of the sailors, soldiers, and marines trained at the base ended up at Normandy.
As for the message, it is still not clear if the message was placed in the bottle eight decades ago, or sometime after it was written.
NewsNation reported that a woman in Texas thinks her grandfather wrote the letter. The Navy is validating records to see if the timeline matches up.