A rare letter written by a Titanic survivor just before the ship’s tragic sinking has sold for an incredible £300,000 ($400,000) at a UK auction. The handwritten note by Colonel Archibald Gracie was sold at Henry Aldridge and Son auction house in Wiltshire. It was expected to fetch around £60,000 but ended up selling for five times that amount to an anonymous buyer.
The letter was dated 10 April 1912, the same day Colonel Gracie boarded the Titanic in Southampton. It was sent the next day when the ship made a stop in Queenstown, Ireland. The message has been described as “prophetic” since it showed Col Gracie expressing his intention to wait until the end of the journey to form an opinion on the ship.
Col Gracie was a first-class passenger on the Titanic, which was carrying around 2,200 people to New York. After the ship struck an iceberg on 15 April, more than 1,500 people died. Col Gracie survived the disaster by climbing onto an overturned lifeboat, but he later wrote that many men around him died from the freezing water and exhaustion.
After surviving the tragedy, he wrote a book called The Truth About The Titanic, which is still one of the most detailed and well-known personal accounts of the disaster. Though he made it through the sinking, his health never fully recovered. He suffered from hypothermia and other injuries and died later that year, in December, after falling into a coma caused by complications from diabetes.
Auction experts said this is the highest price ever paid for any letter written on board the Titanic. The sale marks a significant moment for collectors of Titanic history and memorabilia.
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