The family of a man who threw a bottle into the sea off Canada more than a decade ago say they have been given great comfort after it was found washed up off the coast of Co Donegal.
The bottle was cast into the sea by Lewis Knight off Labrador in 2004.
Sadly Mr Knight, a ship’s officer, has since died in 2011.
But the discovery of the bottle has brought great joy to the late Mr Lewis’ family.
The bottle was found by Donal Gallagher, from Gaoth Dobhair, while walking on the small island of Inisheane in June last.
He spent months trying to find Mr Knight’s family and then decided in recent weeks to post the pictures of the bottle and a message on Facebook.
And amazingly in recent days Mr Gallagher and the late Mr Knight’s family have been put in contact.
The Bottle which travelled from Canada with a message and was retrieved fromt eh sea by Donegal man Donal Gallagher and his daughter Aibhe.
The thought that their father’s notes in a bottle are still floating in the ocean, waiting to be found, brings joy to Susan and Yvonne Knight.
The late Mr Knight was a sailor, first with Marine Atlantic and then with the Woodward Group in Labrador.
Between 1970 and 2008 he pitched an unknown number of messages in bottles into the sea.
Susan told Canadian Broadcast News that the discovery of the bottle has brought her family huge joy.
“The first one pretty much all made us cry, because it felt like there was a piece of him living on,” Susan said. “This year, when we got this one at Christmastime, it’s almost like a little Christmas gift from him.”
The Knights say their father loved to be at sea. His career lasted decades, working his way up from deck crew to ship’s officer.
His messages were not complex — usually just his address where someone could write him back — but he was fascinated about where they would wash up.
They were often sent inside Purity syrup bottles.
This latest bottle had been thrown from the Northern Ranger boat off Labrador in November 2004.
Donegal man Donal Gallagher described the discovery as “unbelievable.”
“The first thing we saw was the date of 2004. This is unbelievable, because the bottle itself was in quite good condition,” he says. “The actual message, it was in great condition considering what it went through.”
Mr Lewis’ daughter Yvonne said her father would have been filled with excitement if he had been alive today.
“It just takes you back to the excitement that he would have had if he
had still been alive,” she says, “and just share the love that he had
for the sea, and throwing things overboard to see where it would go.”
Lewis Knight’s home, where the family still lives, is filled with
postcards and responses to his bottled messages.
A number of bottle cast into the sea by Lewis have been found around the world.
The responses ranged from postcards and pamphlets to photos of families.
“That’s exciting to see, that it’s not just fun and fascinating for
us, but that other people find it quite intriguing too,” Yvonne says.
“He got to see a little bit of a world even though he didn’t have to
go there.”
His daughters say there is always a funny story to how the messages
are found — for instance, by kayakers stuck on an uninhabited island
or a man chasing a sheep up the side of a cliff.
“As long as his bottles are out there, Lewis is not gone. Lewis’s
spirit lives on,” Gallagher said.
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