Not as old, but still old

 

Back in early August, I posted about a message in a bottle that might be the oldest ever found. Now, still catching up on the news, I'm posting about a message in a bottle that's definitely old, and definitively dated. Not as old as the potential record-holder, but still tossed into the ocean decades ago.

Florida woman finds a message in a bottle after Tropical Storm Debby

It's a bit mysterious; the letter can be read, addressed to someone named "Lee". The letterhead is from a base in Virginia. Now, the currents don't flow that way, but conceivably it could have spiraled into the Sargasso Sea from the Gulf Stream (if it was tossed into the ocean off Virginia), floated slowly around there for years, then drifted south to the flow that goes into the Caribbean, and henceforth into the feeders to the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico. That's a long trip. Alternatively, maybe the person that wrote it took the letterhead with them to a new posting (like somewhere on the Gulf Coast) and tossed it in. 

The fact that it's addressed to "Lee" is intriguing. As the article notes, why is it addressed to a specific person?  I speculate (and it seems to me I saw other speculation) that perhaps it was written before the writer found it that something had happened to Lee, perhaps something tragic, and put the final message into the bottle as a living memorial.

It would be very interesting to know more.