Man finds bottle on Alaskan shore with note from Soviet captain
On a breezy summer evening, Tyler Ivanoff took his family on a boat trip to a remote beach in western Alaska. While his children plucked salmonberries on a hillside, Ivanoff searched the coastline for driftwood to use in a campfire. That’s when a green bottle in the sand caught his eye.
He darted back up the hill Aug. 5 and showed his children the glinting bottle with a cork cap and piece of paper curled up inside.
“Dada, is that a treasure map from a pirate ship?” his 8-year-old daughter exclaimed, Ivanoff recalled in a Sunday interview with the Washington Post.
Ivanoff uncorked the vessel and pulled out a wrinkled sheet with a message crafted in blue ink. The penmanship was worn but legible, and, as Ivanoff recognized from language classes in college, written in Russian.
Ivanoff, 36, lives in Shishmaref, Alaska, an island village of around 600 people not far from Russian territory. He had been preparing a campfire to roast hot dogs when he spotted the green bottle lying a few feet from the water.
After his kids oohed and aahed at his discovery, Ivanoff tucked away his find. But before he went to bed, he posted a photo of the note to Facebook, asking for help deciphering its message.
He woke up hours later to 500 shares on the post and messages from friends of friends offering insight into what it said.
“Sincere greetings! From the Russian Far East Fleet mother ship VRXF Sulak,” it read, according a translation on the BBC. “I greet you who finds the bottle and request that you respond to the address Vladivostok -43 BRXF Sulak to the whole crew. We wish you good health and long years of life and happy sailing. 20 June 1969.”
The message, it seemed, was sent by someone affiliated with the Soviet navy more than 50 years ago.
Within the day, Russian reporters had gotten wind of the bottle and by the end of the week, they had tracked down its author: Capt. Anatoliy Botsanenko, now 86 and living in Crimea.
Reporters from Russia-1, the state broadcaster, visited Botsanenko at his home to show him the note. The captain studied a photo of the paper, growing tearyeyed as he recognized his handwriting from decades ago.
Botsanenko had tossed his message into the sea when he was 36 and serving aboard the Sulak, a ship he told reporters he helped construct and then sailed on until 1970.
The captain and Ivanoff have not yet spoken, but Ivanoff hopes to connect with Botsanenko one day.
“I would like to say hello and a heartfelt greeting to him also,” Ivanoff said. “I also wish him good health, a long life and happy sailing.”