Message In a Bottle

Emily Crowhurst receives her father's message from Steve Gowan 

Another poignant World War I story involving a message in a bottle concerns a young British soldier named Pvt. Thomas Hughes. It was 1914, the first year in the war, and Hughes was lonely aboard a transport ship.

He wrote a letter to his wife, but with no way to mail it to her, he decided to take a chance and stuff the letter into a ginger ale bottle, seal it, and cast it into the English Channel. Poor Pvt. Hughes died only two days later on a French battlefield. His wife never received his letter.

But that was not the end of the story. Decades later, in 1999, the bottle was found bobbing around in the Thames by a local fisherman. He and others tried to find Hughes' wife, but it turned out she had passed away in 1979.

However, a little more digging produced some good news - it was discovered that Hughes had a daughter, who was then an elderly 86-year-old living in New Zealand. She was only one year old when she lost her father, but she lived to receive the letter he wrote to her mother all those years ago. His message read:

"Dear Wife, I am writing this note on this boat and dropping it into the sea just to see if it will reach you. If it does, sign this envelope on the right hand bottom corner where it says receipt. Put the date and hour of receipt and your name where it says signature and look after it well. Ta ta sweet, for the present. Your Hubby."

https://www.ranker.com/list/mysterious-messages-in-bottles/cheryl-adams-richkoff