A boat captain in Michigan, United States received an unexpected surprise when she found a stray bottle with a hidden message while scuba diving in the Cheboygan River. Jennifer Dowker found a message from 1926 in the said bottle and reportedly discovered the relic while cleaning the glass-bottom of her boat.

Owner of the Nautical North Family Adventures, Dowker is not new to such discoveries in the water. CNN reported that she has now amassed a collection of bottles and other objects found underwater.Dowker claimed that the bottle caught her attention owing to its green colour and the old fashioned style, which she claims was lying 10 feet underwater. According to Dowker, she initially thought that it was simply a “cool” bottle, but quickly noticed written words inside it, which shocked her.

She told CNN about the moment of discovery – “It was kind of like ‘Holy Smokes! We’ve got a message in a bottle here. Cool!’”.

Upon taking the bottle back to the surface, Dowker found that its cork had been damaged and that bottle was filled with water.

Soon after, she fished out the note with a small tool and unrolled it to reveal the message which said the following: “Will the person who finds this bottle return this paper to George Morrow Cheboygan, Michigan and tell where it was found?”

The note was dated November 1926. Soon after reading the message, Dowker posted the discovery’s images on her company’s Facebook page, hoping to find someone related to Morrows.

But when she posted the images and went to bed that night, she had no idea the kind of traction it would gain. By the next morning, the post had been shared over 100,000 times with 6,000 comments from those willing to share leads or looking for more details.

Dowker was dumbfounded after receiving a call from George Morrow’s daughter, Michele Primeau on Father’s Day.

Primeau told CNN that she recognised her dad’s handwriting on the note, which was written two decades before her birth. She estimated that her father would have been 17 or 18 years old when he threw the bottle in the river.

George Morrow passed away in 1995, but Primeau noted how this relic that bought back memories.