WWI Soldier's Message in a Bottle Reached His Daughter

On September 9, 1914, Private Thomas Hughes of the Second Durham Light Infantry stood on a ship crossing the English Channel, heading toward the trenches of World War I. He scribbled a note, sealed it in a green ginger beer bottle with a rubber stopper, and tossed it into the sea. Days later, he was dead.

Eighty-five years later, that bottle would surface in one of history's most poignant deliveries.

A Fisherman's Unexpected Catch

In March 1999, fisherman Steve Gowan was dredging for cod in the Thames Estuary when his nets pulled up something unusual—a green bottle crusted with decades of sediment. Inside was Hughes's letter, remarkably preserved despite 84 years underwater.

The message was simple but heartrending: "Would you kindly forward the enclosed letter and earn the blessing of a poor British soldier on his way to the front this ninth day of September, 1914."

Enclosed was a love letter addressed to his wife, Elizabeth.

The Search for Family

There was just one problem: Elizabeth Hughes had died in 1979. After her husband's death in WWI, she had remarried and moved to Auckland, New Zealand with their daughter Emily in 1922. She never received her husband's message.

Through genealogical research and a stroke of luck, a cousin of Emily's learned about the discovered bottle and contacted Gowan. Emily Crowhurst was alive, living in New Zealand, and now 86 years old.

An Ocean Away, A Promise Fulfilled

In an extraordinary gesture, New Zealand Post flew Steve Gowan and his wife from England to Auckland to personally deliver the letter to Emily. Nearly a century after her father had sealed his final words in glass, she finally received his message.

For Emily, who had been just a baby when her father left for war and never returned, the letter was an unexpected connection to a man she never knew. It was a voice from beyond the grave—not quite reaching the recipient he'd intended, but finding its way to someone who cherished it even more.

The Power of Glass and Chance

The odds of this letter's survival were astronomical:

• The bottle had to remain sealed for 85 years in the harsh marine environment
• It had to avoid being smashed on rocks or crushed by ships
• A fisherman had to pull it up in his nets rather than leaving it on the ocean floor
• Someone had to successfully trace Hughes's descendants across continents
• His daughter had to still be alive at 86 when the letter surfaced

Emily Crowhurst lived until 2014, passing away at 101—almost exactly a century after her father threw his bottle into the Channel. For fifteen years, she had something she never expected to possess: a love letter from her father, written in the shadow of death, delivered by the tides of time.