Irish Boy Finds Canadian Message-in-Bottle

A nine year-old boy in Ireland has discovered a message sent in a bottle from Canada eight years ago, and has even managed to track down the two senders.

Charlene Dalpe and Claudia Garneau, from Montreal, were 12 years old when they placed a message in a bottle while on holiday in Gaspesie in the Grande-Vallee part of Quebec in 2004.

Last Thursday, Oisin Millea discovered the note, dated June 4 2004, inside a green two-litre plastic bottle just off the beach near his home in the small fishing village of Passage East on the south-east coast of Ireland.

It followed days of high tides and strong winds that had battered the Irish coast.

"There was loads of stuff washed up. I thought there was just a label inside this bottle but when I saw the hair band used to keep it together, I opened it up," Oisin told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

Inside, the note was perfectly preserved.

"I couldn't understand a word of it as it was all in French but I saw the date and the email address," he explained.

"I ran home and my mum helped me use the internet to translate it," he added.

The bottle traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and up the Suir estuary in Ireland before being discovered by Oisin while out playing with friends.

The girls had not given their surnames in the note and the email address no longer worked.

A print, television and social media campaign both sides of the Atlantic successfully tracked down the two women, now aged 20, in Montreal on Tuesday.

Charlene and Claudia joined Oisin for a Skype chat during which he showed them the bottle -- and note -- from eight years ago.