A letter from a Titanic survivor brought in a record £300,000 at a UK auction

Days before the Titanic sank, a survivor wrote a letter that has sold for a record-breaking £300,000. 

At a UK auction, a letter written by a Titanic passenger just days before the ship sank brought in a record-breaking £300,000 ($400,000). 

On Sunday, an unknown buyer at the Wiltshire-based Henry Aldridge and Son auction house bought Colonel Archibald Gracie’s letter, which sold for five times the £60,000 it was anticipated to bring. 

The letter, which documents Col. Gracie informing an associate that he would “await my journey’s end” before making a judgment on the “fine ship,” has been called “prophetic.” 

The letter was written from Col. Gracie’s cabin C51 on 10 April 1912, the day he boarded the Titanic in Southampton and five days before it hit an iceberg and sunk in the North Atlantic. It was postmarked on April 12, 1912, in London, and on April 11, 1912, when the ship docked in Queenstown, Ireland. 

According to the auctioneer who oversaw the transaction, the letter sold for the most money of the letters sent on the Titanic. 

More over 1,500 of the 2,200 passengers and crew members who sailed to New York perished, including Col. Gracie. His in-depth description of the catastrophe rose to prominence and eventually served as the foundation for his book “The Truth About the Titanic.” 

Noting that over half of the guys who had first arrived at the lifeboat perished from tiredness or cold, he managed to survive the sinking by clambering onto an overturned lifeboat in the frigid waters. 

Despite surviving the catastrophe, Col. Gracie’s physical wounds and hypothermia caused his health to decline. On December 2, 1912, he went into a coma and passed away two days later from problems related to diabetes.