A group of visitors from New Jersey were surprised this week to discover a message in a bottle on a Bermuda beach.

Daniel and Barbara Jones and their friends Charles and Maureen Richvalsky discovered the green glass bottle containing the note while walking along Church Bay on Wednesday morning.

“We walked by it once and looked at it and didn’t think anything of it,” Mr Jones said. “On the way back I looked at it and saw barnacles, so I walked over and picked it up and saw the note in there. I just thought ‘Wow! What a find!’

“We went back to the room, took the cork out and used Maureen’s tweezers to pull the note out, but we couldn’t understand it.”

The letter, which appears to be dated August 20, 2013, is believed to be written in Portuguese. While the letter is physically intact, it has suffered some water damage during its time at sea, blurring sections of the ink and making it more difficult to read.

Mr Jones said that while they have not been able to find anyone able to translate the note yet, everyone they have approached about it has shared their excitement for the discovery.

“The reaction from the people we have told about it was the same as it was when we found it,” he said. “Everyone is telling us how cool it is.”