Local News

A Mass. teen put a message in a bottle in 1976. Two brothers just found it in the Caribbean.

“We knew right away that we had something special."

Clint and Evan Buffington discovered a message in a bottle written by a Massachusetts teen nearly 50 years before. Evan Buffington

By Lindsay Shachnow

April 18, 2025

4 minutes to read

Clint Buffington and his brother Evan were basically trained to become professional treasure hunters.

As kids, the boys grew up hunting mushrooms and exploring rock quarries. Eventually, they started going on beachcombing trips, where they’d walk up and down the shoreline searching for anything from seaglass to microwaves.

“We would compete to see who could find not the biggest shark’s tooth, but the smallest shark’s tooth,” Clint told Boston.com. “Because that would show you who had the keenest eye.”

When Clint was nearly done with college, his parents went on a vacation to the Caribbean, returning with a message in a bottle.

“I learned about his bottles, and I always dreamed of finding one,” he said.

For Clint’s graduation present, his father took him on a trip to the Caribbean, where he found his first message in a bottle.

“I suddenly understood it,” Clint said. “It was like all the other stuff I grew up doing…if you find shark’s teeth, there’s gonna be more. Find a message in a bottle, there’s gonna be more.”

And there were more.

It had been six years since Clint and Evan got to go on a beachcombing trip together.

And the long-awaited vacation almost didn’t happen.

Both brothers got very sick in the week leading up to the recent trip, but ultimately, they made it to their destination: a sparsely inhabited island in the Bahamas.

As soon as the sun started to rise, they headed to the beach, parting in separate ways to most effectively scour the island. After searching for some time, crawling on his hands and knees, Evan found something half buried in the sand.

He immediately radioed his brother.

“Man, you’re not gonna believe what I found,” Evan said over the walkie talkie.

Clint found his brother triumphantly holding up an old glass Pepsi bottle, with a date stamp of 1975.

“We knew right away that we had something special,” Clint said.

Inside the Pepsi bottle was a note dating back to 1976. The sun had stained the paper so dark brown that it looked like a cigar.

“You almost expect to unfold it and have it be a treasure map,” Clint said. “That’s what it looks like.”

Peter R. Thompson of West Newbury, Massachusetts, wrote the letter back when he was a ninth-grader at Pentucket Regional Junior High School.

“I am in an oceanography course,” the letter reads. “Will you please send this back to the address at the bottom and say where you found it, what day and time, and how. This was launched by a Coast Guard ship in the month of May 1976.”

The brothers reveled in their discovery, but knew their next mission was to find Thompson.

“We treasure these trips, me and my brother and family,” Evan told Boston.com. “What means more sometimes to us in these situations is reaching out and getting a hold of the people, the story behind it.”

Clint posted a video about the bottle on TikTok, hoping it would help them to track down Thompson. It went viral, amassing over 1 million views.

@clint_buffington Here’s the 1976 message in a bottle my brother found a few weeks ago! Y’all wanted to know what it says, so here you go 🙂 Now, to some, this may sound like a pretty “straightforward” message… No romance, no pirate treasure map. But just think what it meant to the 14 year old kid from West Newbury Massachusetts who sent it in the 70s! The dreams of where it would travel, where it might wind up, who might find it… Well, after who knows how many trips around the North Atlantic, drifting past whales and cargo ships, shimmering under the northern lights…it wound up on a very sparsely inhabited out-island of the Bahamas and rested in the sun as world leaders and wars came and went, music and clothing styles rose and fell. Somewhere in there, my brother (who found it) and I were born, grew up, went to school, got married, had kids…. And all that time, this message was waiting to be found. There’s way more going on with this message than you could ever imagine just by reading it! So, here’s hoping we connect with Peter R. Thompson of West Newbury, MA — And that wherever he is today, he still has that 14-year-old dreamer inside him, full of curiosity! #messageinabottle #westnewbury #massachusetts #beachcombing #beachcomber #beachcombingtreasure #treasurehunting #fun #happy #goodvibes #newengland #lostandfound #exciting ♬ original sound – Clint Buffington

A WCVB reporter beat them to the punch, finding Thompson and connecting him with his long lost letter-finders.

While Thompson didn’t recall writing the letter, he remembered attending the oceanography class.

“I couldn’t remember the experiment, and actually preparing the bottle or anything,” he told Boston.com. “That was a little frustrating not being able to remember.”

Still, Thompson said the whole thing felt “surreal.”

“It’s thrown me back to when I was 14 and thinking about school back then, my life, and how much things have changed in 50 years,” he said.

For Evan, the experience felt like a “rollercoaster.”

“From a beachcomber perspective, it’s like an ultimate dream to be a part of something like this,” he said. “It’s mind blowing.”