A Diver Found This 95-Year-Old Message In A Bottle – And It Sparked A Heartwarming Chain Of Events

Beneath the surface of Michigan’s Cheboygan River, a scuba diver is busy keeping the panes of her glass-bottomed boat sparkling clear and grime-free. But as Jennifer Dowker darts back and forth through the water, she spots something glinting on the bed below. It’s an old bottle, discarded many years ago – but there’s an amazing secret hiding inside.

Bringing the bottle to the surface, Dowker realized that it contained a message, written almost 100 years ago. But who was it that put pen to paper back in the 1920s, only to toss the note into the river? Inspired by her unexpected find, the diver decided to try and track down the author of the note.

Equipped with just a name and location, though, Dowker had little time for an exhaustive search. So she turned to social media in the hopes of finding the mysterious letter-writer – or any of his descendants. What followed was a heartwarming chain of events that has brought the history of Cheboygan, MI, to life.

Did Dowker ever manage to find George Morrow, who had signed his name at the bottom of the long-lost note? And were his family ever reunited with the letter that he cast into the Cheboygan River back in 1926? At some point in our lives, most of us have probably considered sending a message in a bottle – but few could expect such startling results.

Although messages such as Morrow’s don’t usually fall under her remit, Dowker has plenty of experience when it comes to underwater adventures. After all, she works in Cheboygan, which sits on the shores of Lake Huron in the Great Lakes. And according to her company’s website, she is passionate about exploring the region.

Initially, Dowker trained as a teacher – in fact, even today she home-schools her three young children. But in 2018 she decided on a change of career and founded Nautical North Family Adventures, running boat tours of the waters around Cheboygan. As a qualified vessel captain, she often takes the wheel herself.

Now, Nautical North is one of the top tour companies in Cheboygan, offering a variety of cruises around the Great Lakes area. On an average day, Dowker might take visitors on a trip to see shipwrecks at the bottom of Lake Huron, perhaps, or lead an adventure round the many lighthouses of the region.

On other days, the team at Nautical North take visitors on incredible journeys beneath the surface. So, whether scuba diving or snorkeling, Dowker spends plenty of time exploring the depths. But she never could have predicted the remarkable find that has made global news – and catapulted the small city of Cheboygan into the spotlight.

Founded in 1871 Cheboygan has been an important port in the Great Lakes region since at least the 1890s. And over the years, a number of ships and vessels have passed through its waters. Was the bottle that Dowker found cast aside by a sailor many decades ago, then? Or did it have an even more dramatic origin story? 

On June 18, 2021, Dowker was carrying out some maintenance on the Yankee Sunshine, one of the boats belonging to Nautical North. But cleaning this 28-person vessel was no ordinary task. You see, the bottom of the craft is made from glass, allowing passengers a clear view of the waters below.

Over time, though, these windows inevitably get dirty, and Dowker needs to get beneath the surface in order to give them a clean. Never one to shy away from a chore, she donned scuba diving gear and plunged into the Cheboygan River. And it was there, at a depth of 10’, that she spotted a green glass bottle resting on the bottom.

According to CNN, Dowker has previously made a habit of collecting the discarded objects that she stumbles upon during her diving trips. At first, then, this discovery must not have seemed particularly out of the ordinary. But when the adventurer took a closer look, she realized that this was something special.

“At first I thought it was just a cool bottle,” Dowker told TV network CNN in June 2021, “and then when I picked it up, when I was still under the water, I could read the word ‘this’ in the paper. It was kind of like, ‘Holy smokes! We’ve got a message in a bottle here. Cool!’” Intrigued, she brought the find to the surface for closer examination.

As Dowker emerged from the water, she shouted out to her first mate Rob Hemmer, who is also employed by a local history museum. Speaking to The Washington Post newspaper in June 2021 she explained, “I hollered, ‘Grab my phone and snap a picture – I just found a message in a bottle!’”

At first, though, the pair were unsure whether or not the note would be salvageable. After all, the bottle was mostly filled with water, and it was clear that the seal had seen better days. All the same, Hemmer used a jackknife to remove the cork and empty the liquid, retrieving the sodden letter within.

Despite the damage, it turns out, the note was still perfectly legible. Written in a combination of block capitals and cursive, it contained a name and date – as well as instructions to whoever might discover it. The letter read, “Will the person who finds this bottle return this paper to George Morrow Cheboygan, Michigan and tell where it was found?”

Astonishingly, the note was signed with the date November 1926 – nearly a century before Dowker’s fateful diving trip. The author, then, was almost certainly no longer alive. But perhaps some of his descendants could be located? While Hemmer took the find home and placed it in the freezer for safekeeping, his co-worker decided to turn detective. After all, she reasoned, there were still some Morrows living in Cheboygan in 2021. 

The day after the discovery, Dowker uploaded a post to her company’s Facebook page. It read, “So look what I found while washing windows (and cruising along with the fish)... any Morrows out there know a George Morrow that would’ve written this circa 1926?” Confident that her message would make its way around the local community, the diver closed her computer and headed to bed. 

The next day, though, Dowker was in for a shock. By the time that she woke on the morning of June 20, her post about the message in a bottle had gone viral. To date, it has been shared over 100,000 times. Speaking to CNN, she said, “What was going through my mind was, ‘Where am I even going to find the time to do the research to find the person?’”

Luckily, Dowker needn’t have worried. Because people weren’t just sharing her Facebook post – they were actively offering to help as well. Using a combination of family knowledge and internet sleuthing, several commenters began adding their own suggestions on who the note’s author might have been. Then, one woman hit the jackpot.

“I FOUND THE DAUGHTER!” René Szatkowski wrote in excited capitals under Dowker’s original post. “They do not have Facebook… she is ecstatic.” Apparently, the eagle-eyed user had used Morrow’s obituary to track down one of his surviving relatives. Now 74 years old, Michele Primeau was living in Farmington Hills, some 250 miles south of where the bottle was found.

“I called her and started off the conversation with, ‘You don’t know me and this may be really strange, but there are people looking for you on the internet,’” Szatowski told The Washington Post. Later, she explained why she felt compelled to help, adding, “I know that I would cherish something like that from my own family’s past.”

Shown a photograph of the note, Primeau was able to confirm that it was her father’s handwriting – even though she was born two decades after it had been penned. And according to The Washington Post, she also explained that sending a message in a bottle was exactly the sort of thing that Morrow would have done. 

“My dad was really sentimental, and I could see him doing something like that,” Primeau said. “When we were kids we went camping at Lake Huron, I remember he did the same thing once. He put a note in a bottle and he threw it in the lake.” And when she saw the date on Dowker’s letter, she was even more convinced.

“My dad was born in November, and I can just picture him going down to the river on his 18th birthday and tossing the bottle in,” Primeau continued. Sadly, Morrow himself died at the age of 85 some 25 years before his note was discovered. But thanks to Dowker’s discovery, his story has been brought back to life.

Primeau, a retired teacher, told The Washington Post that her father had gone on to live a long and varied life after writing the note as a young man. Less than 20 years later, in fact, he was on the battlefields of World War II, helping to repel the Axis forces from western Europe. And as a veteran of Normandy, he had played an important part in the eventual Allied victory.

As the note implied, Primeau explained, her father did indeed grow up in Cheboygan. But later he and his wife AnnEss relocated to Pontiac just north of Detroit, MI, where they raised their two children. Apparently, the couple had quite different personalities – and Morrow might well have been embarrassed if he knew how popular his message in a bottle would become.

“My mom was an extreme extrovert, while my dad was quiet and laid-back,” Primeau explained. “He didn’t like a lot of attention, so he’d probably want to go into hiding if he were here and knew the story about his note in a bottle had gone all over the world.” But despite his reserved nature, she says, Morrow had always been playful.

“Every year, on the anniversary that he met my mother, he would call her on the phone and ask if she’d like to go on a date,” Primeau recalled. “I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised that a note he’d rolled up in a bottle would turn up after 95 years.” And if Dowker’s discovery wasn’t magical enough already, the story also played out on a very significant date.

“So he’s been gone a long time,” Primeau said of her father in an interview with CNN, “but it was kind of cool because all this happened on Father’s Day weekend.” So what of the note – and bottle – that caused all the fuss? According to The Washington Post, Dowker had originally planned to send her find to Morrow’s daughter to keep as a memento.

But Primeau had other ideas. Speaking to CNN, she said, “I thought the right thing to do would be to give it to [Dowker]. She found it and that would keep my dad’s name living on.” Now, she plans to send a photograph of Morrow to Cheboygan, where it will be kept alongside the 95-year-old note. 

According to CNN, Dowker hopes to frame both the photograph and the note and put them on display. For years to come, it seems, visitors to the Yankee Sunshine and Nautical North will be able to see this piece of history up close. And one day, Primeau herself hopes to be among them.

When she finally makes it to Cheboygan to see the note, Primeau can be sure of a warm welcome. Speaking to The Washington Post, Dowker explained, “I told Michele that she now has a lifetime boat pass. Anytime she’d like, I’ll take her out on the water. She’s thinking she’ll come out in September, and I’d love to take her on one of my shipwreck tours.”

Meanwhile, as the excitement over Morrow’s note finally dies down, Dowker has turned her attention to other things. She continued, “Wouldn’t it be cool if now we also found a treasure map?” But although the team at Nautical North have yet to stumble across such an artifact, they are not the only ones to recover a message in a bottle from an unlikely location.

In fact, less than two weeks before Dowker discovered Morrow’s letter, teenager Christian Santos was fishing off the Azores in the North Atlantic Ocean. After spotting a battered plastic bottle floating in the water, he retrieved it and found a note hidden inside. But unlike the message found in Cheboygan, this one had an email address attached.

“It is Thanksgiving,” the note read. “I am 13 and visiting family in Rhode Island. I am from Vermont.” Apparently, the message in a bottle had been dropped into the ocean back in 2018 – and had traveled some 3,000 miles to the Azores. Delighted with his discovery, Santos sent an email to the included address – but never received a reply.

Eventually, like Dowker, Santos’ mother turned to social media for help. And after the story went viral, 16-year-old Sean Smith came forward to claim the message as his own. Apparently, he had thrown several similar notes into the ocean, although he had long abandoned hope that this one would be found. Now, he plans to maintain a friendship with the boy who found his bottle thousands of miles away. 

The world record, though, is held by Andrew Leaper, a Scot who fished a bottle out of the sea near the Shetland Islands in 2012. According to the note inside, it had first been set adrift by a Glasgow captain back in 1914 – spending a total of 98 years afloat. Coincidentally, it wasn’t the first time that the boat, a fishing vessel known as the Copious, had encountered such a message. 

According to the BBC, another man on board the Copious had also discovered a message in a bottle back in 2006. And like Leaper’s find, it had been at sea since the 1910s. It’s not unusual, then, for notes such as these to be discovered many decades after being cast into the ocean. 

Still, stories such as Dowker and Primeau’s continue to capture the imagination. And for the woman who lost her father more than 25 years ago, this message in a bottle has provided an unexpected opportunity to connect with the past. What other treasures, we wonder, might be out there waiting to be discovered?