A letter penned by a Titanic passenger just days before the ship’s tragic sinking has been sold for a record-breaking £300,000 ($400,000) at auction in the United Kingdom.
Written by Colonel Archibald Gracie IV, the letter was purchased by an anonymous buyer at Henry Aldridge & Son auction house in Wiltshire on Sunday — fetching five times its original estimate of £60,000.
Described as “prophetic,” the letter features Col. Gracie expressing cautious optimism about the Titanic, noting that he would “await my journey’s end” before offering a full judgment on the “fine ship.”
Dated 10 April 1912 — the very day Col. Gracie boarded the Titanic at Southampton — the letter was composed from his first-class cabin, C51. It was posted when the ship stopped briefly at Queenstown, Ireland (now Cobh), on 11 April 1912, and later postmarked in London on 12 April.
Col. Gracie was one of approximately 2,200 passengers and crew aboard the Titanic during its maiden voyage to New York. After the ship struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic on 15 April 1912, more than 1,500 lives were lost in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.
Col. Gracie, among the survivors, escaped death by climbing onto an overturned lifeboat after the ship foundered. He later chronicled his harrowing experience in his book The Truth About the Titanic, which remains one of the most detailed first-hand accounts of the disaster.
In his writings, Gracie described how many men who initially survived on the overturned lifeboat succumbed to the freezing temperatures and exhaustion.
Though he survived the sinking, Col. Gracie’s health was gravely affected. Weakened by hypothermia and injuries, he fell into a coma on 2 December 1912 and died two days later from complications related to diabetes.
The auction house confirmed that this letter achieved the highest price ever recorded for correspondence written aboard the Titanic, underscoring the enduring fascination with the ship’s tragic story.
