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Ammon News - A visitor to a British beach found a message in a bottle that had been launched from the Bahamas by a Canadian girl 21 years earlier.

Crispin Benton said he was taking a post-work walk on Castle Beach in Falmouth, England, when he spotted a bottle on the tide line.

"It was hide tide, so it was likely it had freshly washed in. I picked it up, then I thought 'Oh my goodness, there's a message in there' and got a bit excited," Benton told The Falmouth Packet.

A student photographer visiting the same beach snapped a photo of Benton and read the note with him.

The letter, dated June 21, 2001, was authored by a 6-year-old Canadian girl named Anna who was visiting the Bahamas.

"Please don't pollute. Thank you," Anna wrote.

Anna included a mailing address and asked for the finder to write her a letter, but Benton said a search online revealed the address has since been converted into an industrial estate.

Benton said he is now hoping Anna will find out about the bottle's discovery and get in contact.

"It's just one of those things you don't think will ever happen, to find a message in a bottle. It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and to think someone wrote that 20-odd years ago. What's she doing now?" he said.

A couple taking a walk on Magheraroarty beach, on the Dooey Peninsula in Ireland's County Donegal, made a similar discovery in January.

Rita Simmonds and Ciaran Marronn found a message in a bottle that turned out to have been authored by an 11-year-old girl named Sasha and was launched from Ocean City, Md., in 2019.

*upi