NJ family finds message in bottle from Ireland

August 26, 2023

They got the message.

A New Jersey couple discovered a letter in a bottle that drifted in the ocean for four years, floating more than 3,000 miles from Ireland — and managed to track down the note’s author following an international search.

Frank and Karen Bolger had been cleaning up trash along the beach in North Wildwood with their granddaughter, Autumn, on Aug. 16 when they noticed a glass bottle with a note stuffed inside.

“Greetings from Ireland. I have thrown this bottle into the sea for someone to find another day,” read the letter, dated July 17, 2019.

“Maybe it’s traveled down to Africa or to Iceland! I won’t know if someone found it, but I hope it is found,” the message concluded, which was only signed by “Aoife.”

Bolger shared the story of his family’s stunning with IrishCentral, hoping that it might lead them to Aoife.

News of the Bellmawr couple’s mission quickly went viral, eventually making its way to the letter’s author, Aoife Byrne, of Bray, Ireland, about 15 miles south of Dublin.

Message and bottle discovered by a family cleaning a North Wildwood beach. — Frank and Karen Bolger discovered a message in a bottle from Ireland, and launched a mission to find the note’s author.

Karen Bolger, Autumn, and Frank Bolger — The Bolger’s found the message in a bottle while cleaning the beach with their granddaughter, Autumn.

Byrne’s father, Martin, had been watching a segment on local Irish TV station about the Bolgers’ search and realized the Irish girl the couple was looking for was his daughter, Irish News reported.

The father-daughter pair connected with the Bolgers, and Byrne sent them a scribbled note to prove her identity as the note’s author.

“I was shaking,” Bolger told WPVI-TV. “I couldn’t believe it. I never thought we would find her.”

The message was written on July 17, 2019. — Aoife Byrne’s message was written on July 17, 2019.

Aoife Byrne and her father, Martin — Byrne learned the Bolger’s discovered her note after her father saw a new segment about their search.

Byrne said that she had been on Ireland’s eastern shore in 2019 when she found the bottle and decided to send it on a transatlantic voyage.

“I found this little bottle washed up and I said, ‘I’ve just got to put a message in. I won’t get my hopes up somebody would get it.’ And I threw it straight into [the] middle [of the ocean],” Byrne told Bolger, according to a video posted on Facebook.

“I never expected it would get to America, I thought it be either down south or up north.”