Children's messages in a bottle wash up on beach after 40 years

Messages in a bottle written by three Fife schoolchildren 40 years ago have washed up on a beach in Angus.

Jenny Smith was taking part in a beach clean-up in Monifieth when she found three notes and a map from the Wormit Primary School pupils from 1984.

She managed to track down the three girls, who are now in their late 40s, on a local Facebook group.

The messages will be returned to the school four decades after they set sail on their six-mile journey.

The women, who live in Arbroath, Ireland and Fife, are all still in touch with each other.

Jenny said: "I picked up three bin bags of rubbish and found this bottle, and I thought there was something like a felt-tip pen inside it.

"I got it out and it was rolled up with an elastic band around it.

"The girl who drew the map had cleverly used wax crayon as the outside wrapping so it had protected it from some of the water that had managed to seep in."

Jenny dried the messages at home and found they were all still legible.

She said: "I could see it said 'help' on it, and I thought, 'oh my goodness', and then realised it was from children.

"It said they'd been taken captive on this HMS WPS, and it explained that this stood for Wormit Primary School."

Jenny said she was surprised at the age of the messages, which outdate various vintage crisp packets from the 1990s that she has found on beach cleans.

She left a message on the Wormit Community Facebook group and within hours had a reply from Linda Bell, who still lives in the village.

Linda said: "When I first read Jenny's Facebook post and saw that the date on the letters from Wormit Primary was June 1984, I thought that I must know who the letters were written by.

"When I read further, I realised that one of the pupils that wrote one of the letters was me and the other two letters were written by my primary school friends, Anna and Kelly."

After telling her friends of the discovery, Linda and Kelly met Jenny to see their letters, which were part of a school project.

Linda said: "We think it was part of a pirate topic while we were in P4.

"It was great to see the letters in such good condition after such a long time."