Titanic Survivor’s Letter Bought for £300,000 at Auction 113 Years Later

By: Olufemi Orunsola 

Some 113 years after the Titanic ship wreck, a letter written by a Titanic passenger days before the ship sank has sold for a record-breaking £300,000 ($400,000) at auction in the UK.

OPEN TELEVISION NAIJA OTN News repoets as gathered that the letter written by Colonel Archibald Gracie 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, which was dated 10 April 1912, the day the writer 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.

According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 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 either 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.

OTN News observes that the auction sales is coming some 113 years after the Titanic ship sank.