Student Project Takes A Cross-Atlantic Journey

Two cultures connected by chance: One, a second grade classroom in North Carolina. The other, a journalist in Portugal. They found one another in the most unlikely of ways.  

"A Teaching Moment"

Susan Schambach was creating lesson plans for her second grade science class. The topic was ocean currents, and she got an idea.

“I projected a map and we looked at how the Gulf Stream comes so close to North Carolina, and I just got the idea that we should put messages in a bottle,” says Schambach.

Eight students from the Triad Academy at Summit School in Winston-Salem created a handwritten letter and placed it in a glass wine bottle, corking each one with a piece of neon colored tape.

Each bottle contained contact information, a postcard and of course, a Summit School pen, so the founder could write back. 

The message inside read:

“Hi. It is your lucky day. You have found one of our drift bottles. As second graders at Summit School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina USA, we are studying oceans and we are very interested in ocean currents and the fact that the Gulf Stream runs very close to our state. ” 

In April 2013, Schambach finally got to Wilmington to see the project through. She left the bottles in the care of Ken Upton, a charter captain, who took them onto his boat. He threw the bottles into the Gulf Stream.

Schambach says she didn't really think anyone would ever find it.   

"An Ancient Tradition"

A message in a bottle is one of the oldest forms of communication. The first recorded ones were released around 310 B.C. by a Greek philosopher. He was trying to prove that the Mediterranean Sea was formed by currents flowing in from the Atlantic Ocean.

This past spring, an exciting discovery was made by a fisherman from Germany. He found what is thought to be the world's oldest message in a bottle dating back to 1913, when  a young man threw it into the Baltic Sea.

"It Was Like A Story Out Of A Movie"

It certainly wasn't likely that anyone would stumble upon the bottles from Mrs. Shambach's class. But then the unexpected happened. Ten and a half months later, more than 4,000 miles away, an elderly man made a stumbled across one of the student's bottles as he walked along the beach of Viana do Castelo, a city in the north of Portugal.  He broke the bottle to get the message out.

“He took the message home so I could translate it,” says his daughter, Portuguese journalist Ivone Marques. “The whole family was surprised because it was a bottle that during one year traveled across the Atlantic Ocean. It was like a story out of a movie.”

The very next day Marques responded to Schambach with a modern day message.

“I was totally shocked, so it's just quite captivating to be checking my email on a Monday morning and get 'Congratulations'! It was amazing and very gratifying,” says Schambach.

It was nine year-old student, Carter McMillan's bottle that was found in Portugal.

“I felt like I was about to pass out because it was so awesome,” says McMillan. “I thought my bottle was eaten by a shark or something big.”

His classmate, Nicholas Baker, says he learned a lot about the Gulf Stream during the project, and he's still holding out hope that his bottle will also be found soon.

“I don't know where my bottle is now, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere probably in the Atlantic Ocean. I hope someone finds it soon. It's surprising how far stuff can go in the ocean,” says Baker.

Schambach intends to make the message in a bottle part of her yearly lesson plans. In fact, she's already released another set of bottles deep into the Atlantic Ocean.

"A Lasting Connection"

But what she didn't anticipate is how meaningful this project would be in places so far away.   Ivone Marques wrote a story about the North Carolina message in a bottle for her Portuguese radio station's website. The story was also published in her local newspaper. For Marques, it's an experience she will never forget.

“I still have the letter with me in a purse since that day that sticks in my mind and the distinct message in a bottle," says Marques. "It's amazing to see how nature does its work, and as we say here, the sea will always return what does not belong to him.”