Titanic Letter

Titanic Survivor's Letter Sold for $400,000 at Auction

Letter written by one of the passengers aboard the Titanic just days before its sinking was day, sold for £300,000 (about $400,000) at an auction in the United Kingdom.

The letter was purchased by an anonymous buyer at Henry Aldridge & Son auction house in Wiltshire, for a price that exceeded five times the initial estimate of around £60,000.

The letter was described as "prophetic," as Colonel Archibald Gracie wrote to a friend that he would "wait until the end of the journey" before passing judgment on the "magnificent ship."

The letter was dated April 10, 1912 — the day Gracie boarded the Titanic at Southampton, and five days before the ship sank after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

Gracie was one of about 2,200 people aboard the Titanic bound for New York, more than 1,500 of whom died in the disaster.

The first-class passenger wrote the letter from his cabin, C51, and sent it when the ship stopped at Queenstown, Ireland, on April 11, 1912. It bears a London postal mark dated April 12, 1912.

The auction official noted that this letter fetched the highest price ever paid for correspondence written aboard the Titanic.

Gracie's account of the Titanic disaster remains one of the most famous. He authored a book titled The Truth About the Titanic, detailing his experiences on the ill-fated voyage.

Gracie recounted how he survived by clinging to an overturned lifeboat in the freezing waters, noting that more than half of those who managed to reach the boat later died from exhaustion or extreme cold.

Although he survived the catastrophe, Colonel Gracie’s health deteriorated severely due to hypothermia and physical injuries. He fell into a coma on December 2, 1912, and died two days later from complications related to diabetes.