The Atlantic Ocean is known for its immensity, for separating continents and uniting cultures through trade routes and voyages of exploration. All the more so with the Canary Islands, the gateway in and out for the treasures and inventions that arrived and landed from the new continent. Yet in 1971, this same sea, untameable at times, acted as an unexpected bridge between two lives that would otherwise never have met.
Guillermo Cabrera Hernández, a regular walker on Famara beach and a resident of the village of La Caleta, and Norman Berg Jones, a retired engineer from Shelbyville, in the Indianapolis area of the United States, saw their lives connected in the most unexpected way.
The find
Guillermo Cabrera Hernández, as he did every summer, was walking along Famara beach, a corner of Lanzarote known for its rugged beauty and its sense of isolation. During one of his walks, something unusual caught his eye. It was a simple bottle which, though he did not yet know it, had drifted for 69 days and travelled more than 500 miles to reach the shore from its point of origin, 300 miles west of Gibraltar.
Guillermo Cabrera, resting after one of his walks along Famara
What first drew Guillermo in, however, was not its contents but the bottle itself. It struck him as a curious and attractive object, enough to take home. Later, examining it more closely with his family, they discovered a note inside. At that point they debated whether to break the bottle to get the paper out or to find a less invasive way of retrieving it. In the end, they managed to remove the note intact.
The letter was written in English, a language Guillermo did not know. This is where don Alfonso Tolosa came in, a Teguise resident who had arrived in Lanzarote after a career in the circus and had married a local woman. Don Alfonso, known for his command of the language, translated the note and helped Guillermo understand its contents.
The bottle’s journey
The note inside the bottle revealed that it had been thrown into the Atlantic on 20 February 1971 by Norman Berg Jones, who was on his way back to the United States after a trip around Mediterranean ports. In his message, Jones asked whoever found the bottle to notify his town’s local newspaper, “The News” of Shelbyville, and provided his full postal address.
Article in the local Indiana newspaper reporting the discovery of the bottle
The message also indicated that the experiment came with no guarantee of success. Jones thought the bottle might take years to be found, if anyone ever found it at all. Yet the ocean currents guided it to the shores of Lanzarote in little more than two months.
An exchange of letters
Moved by curiosity and a wish to reciprocate, Guillermo wrote a letter in reply to Jones’s message, helped once again by don Alfonso. So began a correspondence between two men who, despite cultural differences and geographical distance, shared a spirit of curiosity and humanity.
A picture of the Jones family home sent to Guillermo Cabrera
Jones replied enthusiastically, sending more details about his life in Shelbyville, Indiana. He even included a photograph of his house, a typical American home of the period, surrounded by a well-kept garden and with a car parked in the driveway. The image of the Jones family home offers a window onto their everyday life, showing the contrast between Lanzarote’s desert landscapes and American suburbia. That image, along with the letters, served as a tangible link between two seemingly distant worlds.
The exchange of letters continued for several years. On one occasion, the Joneses visited the Canary Islands during a trip to Tenerife and took the opportunity to travel to Lanzarote. Guillermo and his family welcomed them with hospitality and showed them the island’s most emblematic spots, including a meal at the Los Helechos restaurant, with views over the volcanic landscape.
Several of the letters exchanged by Guillermo and Norman
The envelopes of the letters sent between Lanzarote and Indiana, with their tricolour borders and airmail stamps, are a** physical testament to this transatlantic friendship**. Each letter meant weeks of waiting and anticipation, a rhythm of communication that today seems almost unimaginable.
The relationship between the Jones and Cabrera families was not confined to one generation. Guillermo’s daughter remembers corresponding for a time with Norman’s granddaughter, showing how a simple find could transcend the barriers of time and bring two families together in unexpected ways. Although over the years the correspondence was lost, the memories of that connection remain alive, at least in the family history on this side of the pond.
This story goes beyond the anecdote of a bottle left to the whims of the ocean; it is testament to how the humblest of gestures can weave threads of destiny that defy the vastness of the world. The bond between Guillermo Cabrera and Norman Berg Jones did not only cross the waters of the Atlantic, it broke through the invisible barriers of time, culture and generation, illuminating an essential truth about humanity: our innate capacity to find connection in the most unexpected places.