Quebec, Canada – 105 years after the sinking of the RMS Titanic, a message in a bottle was found on the beach of Canada. It is said to have been thrown from the ship.

For years, researchers have been trying to find out whether the sensational find is a hoax or a genuine artifact, The Sun reported.

A Canadian family discovered the message in a bottle while walking on the beach in New Brunswick in June 2017, and scientists at the French-speaking Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR) are still trying to find out the truth.

If the letter turns out to be genuine, it would be dated April 13, 1912 – two days before the ship sank. The letter says it was written by Mathilde Lefebvre, who was only twelve years old and a third-class passenger at the time.

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This is what the fascinating letter says:

"I am throwing this bottle into the sea in the middle of the Atlantic. We are due to arrive in New York in a few days. If anyone finds it, tell the Lefebvre family in Liévin."

On April 15, 1912, the huge passenger ship sank after hitting a block of ice.

Mathilde Lefebvre, three of her siblings, and her mother Marie were never seen again. Her other siblings and her father waited in vain for the rest of the family to arrive in New York.

"The bottle could be the first Titanic artifact found on the American coast," confirmed historian Maxime Gohier.

UQAR's Nicolas Beaudry said the letter could well be genuine, explaining, "The mould and tool marks on the bottle and the chemical composition of the glass are consistent with the technologies used in making this kind of bottle in the early 20th century."

However, he indicated, "Old paper is easy to find – by ripping a blank page from an old book, for instance – while old bottles and even corks are not rare."

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The scientists and researchers are trying to find out if the bottle would have even had a chance to drift this far.

Dr Beaudry explained, "A computer simulation showed that the overwhelming majority of drifters launched in the North Atlantic on April 13, 1912, would have followed the Gulf Stream to European shores."

He thinks it unlikely, but not impossible, that the bottle made it to the Canadian beach.

The handwriting in the letter makes the message-in-a-bottle mystery even more mysterious: French schoolchildren were learning a different cursive script at the time, but it's possible an older passenger wrote the letter for her.

Further research is still being done to discover the truth behind the curious note.