A Scots' message in a bottle put in the water more than 30 years ago showed up 4,000 miles away on a Florida beach where it was discovered by a couple inspecting damage from Hurricane Irma.
Ruth and Lee Huenniger who live in Key Largo were inspecting damage from the hurricane when they found the bottle with an undated message that appeared to be from students who attended school in Scotland, People magazine reported.
Fiona Cargill, 60, a retired teacher from the Chapelpark Primary School in Forfar, Scotland, told the BBC News she believes the letter was written by one of her classes in the 1980s. She called the discovery of the letter "amazing."
"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," Cargill told the BBC News.
The Huennigers told "Inside Edition" they found the bottle while walking through their homeowners' park on Sept. 29 after the hurricane heavily damaged the area earlier in the month.
The couple was cleaning up debris that had piled up along a fence when they found the plastic bottle and noticed the note inside, "Inside Edition" said.
"We've always picked up bottles," Lee Huenniger said. "We've beach-combed before even when we were kids… you always hear and read about a note in a bottle. Well, we always kind of check and this time there was a note in the bottle."
Cargill told "Inside Edition" the school was closed in 2008.
The Huennigers reached out to the new school in its place, Whitehills Primary, and then contacted Cargill. Three students from the old school reached out to the couple.
"I can remember having a dress up day to celebrate what we had been learning about pirates," Laura Millar, 39, told “Inside Edition.” "I can remember speaking about messages in bottles and that we had written one."
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