A 12-year-old girl was thrilled when she discovered that her letter, placed inside a bottle, was found in Sweden less than a year after it was thrown from a pier in northeastern England.
Grace Liddell, then 11, and her brother Harry Liddell, now 6, threw two bottles filled with handwritten scrolls, including their names and their mother’s contact details, off Roker Pier in Sunderland on August 28, 2023.
On March 6, their mother, Christy Polley, 35, received a response on Messenger saying that Harry’s message had been found in Denmark.
While Grace was happy for her brother, she was waiting for the day when her letter would be found, but despair was creeping in. “Grace was convinced that her letter had drowned,” her mother told the British news agency (PA Media).
But on August 3, Polly opened her Messenger app and saw a message from a man named Freddy Stahlberg who said he had found Grace’s message on an island in Sweden called Benno.
Stahlberg, 72, said he discovered the bottle on August 2, but it was difficult at first to read the message it contained as it had been in salt water for a long time.
He added, “My family and I did our best to find useful words until we were finally able to identify Christy’s name, which is an indication that she has a Facebook page, as well as the word Sunderland.”
He added, “She responded after a while, and we were all very happy that we had solved the puzzle.”
