[Navy6064]

Sailor Gets Angry Reply to Bottle Message

Fri Feb 3, 4:43 PM ET



A sailor who sent a message out to sea in a bottle says he received a reply from England — accusing him of littering. "I kind of felt like no good deed goes unpunished," Harvey Bennett, 55, told the East Hampton Star.

The plastic bottle was one of five that Bennett placed in the ocean off Long Island in August.

Last week, he excitedly opened a letter from England, and was stunned by the reply:

"I recently found your bottle while taking a scenic walk on the beach by Poole Harbour. While you may consider this some profound experiment on the path and speed" of "oceanic currents, I have another name for it, litter."

"You Americans don't seem to be happy unless you are mucking about somewhere," says the letter, signed by Henry Biggelsworth of Bournemouth, in Dorset County.

Bennett, who has a picture of the queen of England in his Amagansett tackle shop, says that Poole Harbor is just a short distance from Weymouth Harbor. That's where the Bennett family embarked for America in 1644.

The New York Post carried the report on Friday, giving attribution to the East Hampton Star.

Bennett did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press on Friday.







2006 The Associated Press