A 50-year-old letter in a bottle from a Russian sailor has been found on the shores of western Alaska.

Tyler Ivanoff found the handwritten Russian near Shishmaref about 966 kilometres northwest of Anchorage, television station KTUU reported.

“I was just gathering firewood,” Mr Ivanoff said.

“I just happened to stumble across the bottle, and I noticed it was a green bottle and had a cork top. Not really cork, it was a tight cap, and I could see inside the bottle there was a note,” he said.

Mr Ivanoff shared his discovery on Facebook, where Russian speakers translated the message to be a greeting from a Cold War Russian sailor dated June 20, 1969.

The message included an address and a request for a response from the person who found it.

Reporters from Russian network, Russia-1, tracked down the original writer, Captain Anatoli Prokofievich Botsanenko, who was sceptical that it was his note until he saw his signature on the bottom.

“It looks like my handwriting. For sure! East industry fishing fleet! E-I-F-F!” Mr Botsanenko said.

Mr Botsanenko was sceptical it was his letter until shown a copy. Photo: Russia-1

The message was dropped into the water while he was aboard the Sulak, a ship whose construction he oversaw in 1966 and on which he sailed until 1970.

At one point in his career, he was the youngest captain in the Pacific at 33 years old, Mr Botsanenko said.

Mr Botsanenko shed tears when the Russian television reporter told him the Sulak was sold for scrap in the 1990s.

Mr Ivanoff said he would consider sending his own message in a bottle with his children.

“But that’s something I could probably do with my kids in the future. Just send a message in a bottle out there and see where it goes,” he said.

-with AAP