A letter written by a Titanic passenger days before the ship sank has been sold for a record-breaking £300,000 ($400,000) at auction in the UK.
Colonel Archibald Gracie’s letter was purchased by an anonymous buyer at Henry Aldridge and Son auction house in Wiltshire on Sunday, at a price five times higher than the £60,000 it was expected to fetch.
The letter has been described as “prophetic”, as it records Col Gracie telling an acquaintance he would “await my journey’s end” before passing judgement on the “fine ship”.
The letter was dated 10 April 1912, the day he boarded the Titanic in Southampton, and five days before it sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic.
Col Gracie was one of about 2,200 passengers and crew on board the Titanic sailing to New York. More than 1,500 died in the disaster.
The first-class passenger, wrote the letter from cabin C51. It was posted when the ship docked in Queenstown, Ireland, on 11 April 1912. It was also postmarked London on 12 April.
The auctioneer who facilitated the sale said the letter had attracted the highest price of any correspondence written onboard the Titanic.
Col Gracie’s account of the sinking is among the best known.
He later wrote the book The Truth About The Titanic, recalling his experience onboard the doomed ocean liner.
He recounted how he survived by scrambling onto an overturned lifeboat in the icy waters.
More than half the men who had originally reached the lifeboat died from exhaustion or cold, he wrote.
Although Col Gracie survived the disaster, his health was severely affected by the hypothermia and physical injuries he suffered.
He fell into a coma on 2 December 1912, and died of complications from diabetes two days later.
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