NAPEAGUE, New York (AP) -- A boat captain who sent a message out to sea in a bottle says he received a reply from Britain -- accusing him of littering.

"I kind of felt like no good deed goes unpunished," Harvey Bennett, 55, told the East Hampton Star.

The plastic bottle was one of five that Bennett placed in the ocean off New York's Long Island in August.

Last month, he excitedly opened a letter from England, and was stunned by the reply:

"I recently found your bottle while taking a scenic walk on the beach by Poole Harbour. While you may consider this some profound experiment on the path and speed" of "oceanic currents, I have another name for it, litter.

"You Americans don't seem to be happy unless you are mucking about somewhere," says the letter, signed by Henry Biggelsworth of Bournemouth, in the southern county of Dorset.