Bottled message sent out to sea is found 5 decades later

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HAMPTON, N.H. — A bottled message sent out to sea by a New Hampshire man more than five decades ago has been returned to his daughter.

WMUR-TV reports the message was discovered by Clint Buffington of Utah while he was vacationing in the Turks and Caicos Islands in a British Overseas Territory southeast of the Bahamas.

Buffington says he found a Coke bottle half-buried in the sand. The note inside the bottle said, “Return to 419 Ocean Blvd. and receive a reward of $150 from Tina, owner of the Beachcomber.”

The Beachcomber was a Hampton motel owned by the now-deceased parents of Paula Pierce in 1960.

Pierce’s father had written the note as a joke and cast it into the Atlantic Ocean.

Buffington flew to New Hampshire to deliver the message to Pierce. She made good on the promised reward.