Message in a Bottle Travels 4,000 Miles

A Connecticut man set the bottle adrift in Long Island Sound in 2010.

A message in a bottle set in Long Island Sound by a Connecticut man a year and a half ago, has turned up in the United Kingdom.

Jerry Pope, of Niantic,  decided to send the message in October 2010.

“I had my bottle and my note in my hand, and I decided I'm going to send it on a journey,” said Pope.

He tossed the bottle into the water and bid it farewell.

“I said good luck to you and maybe somebody will find the bottle, and maybe hopefully, somebody will find it and send me a letter,” said Pope.

He had no idea where the bottle would go, but inside he put his own letter which gave his name and address. It asked the person who found the letter to send him a letter back. He didn't know if it would even make it out of Niantic Bay.

“Where it would end, I wouldn't have said England. I couldn't give a country or a continent where it was going because I had no idea. I didn't even know if it was going to get out of here, but evidently it traveled 4,000 miles all by itself on a lonely journey,” he said.

It traveled all the way to the Isles of Scilly, located 28 miles off the southwestern coast of England.

The bottle was found on March 22, and days later, Pope received this postcard in the mail.

“When I received my postcard back, it jarred my memory because I forgot I did it, and I said isn't that something,” Pope said.

It is something that started as a whim and ended up being an incredible story shared by people on two different continents.

“One day I'm going to do it either this summer or in the fall again, and just see. I'm going to mark bottle number two and just see if it gets there again,” Pope said.

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