bottle. But little did she realise that her dream would come true during her first visit to Bermuda.

Erin told The Royal Gazette she spotted a bottle with "something white in it'' as she looked down from the balcony of her room at The Reefs hotel.

She said she was determined to get to it before a visitor in the hotel's beachside cafe spotted it.

Accompanied down onto the South Shore beach by her father, Mr. Thomas Hudson, Erin quickly retrieved the bottle.

"We looked at it and tried to get it open,'' she recalled. "But we could not, so my father got a pair of pliers and twisted it (the bottle top) off.'' Mr. Hudson was able to get the letter -- which was in an envelope -- out of the bottle by using a knitting needle, she said.

Erin's mother, Mrs. Laura Hudson, said she was surprised that the letter -- which was dated December 3, 1982 -- was "very nicely preserved''.

Mr. Hudson said he had a member of his "multi-lingual'' staff back in Baltimore, Maryland, translate the letter, which was written in Italian.

Through this the Hudsons learned that the male author had written to his beloved "Vera'' while on a ship just off the Azores.

He wrote: "In this moment, at this place, my heart is full of love for you my sweet Vera. I would love very much that someday this page, that was put into a bottle and thrown in the ocean, could reach you, bringing you a new message of love from me.

"Vera, I've always loved you.'' Touched by the contents of the letter and the author's gesture, the Hudsons said they will try to track "Vera'' down and send her a copy of the long-overdue love letter.

OVERDUE MESSAGE -- Ten-year-old Erin Hudson holds a well-preserved love letter that someone placed in a bottle and threw out to sea three years before she was born.