An Irishman’s message in a bottle - flung from a cargo ship off the Canadian coast - was found by a Scottish girl over six months later.
Donegal man Samuel Roger Holmes, 46, was travelling from New York to his hometown of Letterkenny last year when he sent his message out into the Atlantic.
And the bottle, thrown from the top deck of the container ship Atlantic Star, was found by seven-year-old Anna Riddoch when it washed up on the Scottish island of South Uist, thousands of miles away.
Taking to Facebook, the motivational speaker, who lives in New York with his wife, told how the bottle began its journey in the high seas before it washed up on the beach.
“At dawn on September 28th 2018, approx 100 miles south east of St John’s, Newfoundland, on an oceanic plateau called the Grand Banks, I put a message in a small jar, and threw it into the Atlantic Ocean,” he wrote.
Wildfires that ravaged Co Donegal may have been deliberate, council spokesman claims
“I watched through the fog as the small jar fell into the vast Atlantic Ocean from the helipad on the top deck of the Atlantic Star container ship.
“I thought I would never see that jar again.”
Six months after returning to Donegal by the same route, he received an email from the little girl’s family.
Anna was visiting her grandparents on the island and was walking with her dad when she found the bottle and her parents decided to contact Mr Holmes.
He said that Anna’s mother had grown up on the island and told him that she had spent her childhood hoping to find a message in a bottle on the beach.
“It is amazing that a little jar survived so many winter storms and high seas, to make a journey of over 2,000 miles across the ocean,” he wrote.
Defence Forces brought in to help firefighters battle gorse blaze in Co Donegal
Mr Holmes added that he now plans on sending the finder a reward for recovering his message sent at sea.
“Seeing her happy face and hearing how excited she was to find that message on the beach is such a joy!
“Honestly I never thought the message would be found. I knew it would wash up somewhere eventually, but I thought the message may have got damp by then.”
He said that he got the idea from time spent “walking on beaches in Donegal and watching out for messages in bottles”.
Crew of firemen trapped by flames while battling huge gorse fire in Donegal
“Seeing how excited Anna was to find a message in a bottle was the best part.”
He decided to make the unusual journey home via cargo ship; while it is a long voyage, he loves the ocean.
“I always wanted to see what it was like,” he said.
“I also wanted to see what it was like to be without a phone or Wi-Fi for two weeks.”
