A lettercard penned onboard the ill-fated Titanic by one of its most prominent survivors, Archibald Gracie, just days before the disaster, has fetched a remarkable £300,000 at an auction in the United Kingdom.
The note, dated April 10, 1912, was addressed to the great-uncle of the seller and, in it, the first-class passenger wrote of the ill-fated steamship: “It is a fine ship but I shall await my journeys end before I pass judgment on her.”
Auction house Henry Aldridge and Son in Wiltshire, England confirmed the sale to a private collector from the United States over the weekend, CNN reported.
The hammer price dramatically surpassed the initial estimate of £60,000.
This letter is believed to be the only surviving example written by Gracie from aboard the Titanic.
Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge hailed the letter as an “exceptional museum grade piece.”
Gracie, who famously jumped from the sinking vessel and clung to an overturned collapsible boat before being rescued, later documented his harrowing experience in the book, “The Truth about the Titanic”.
Gracie boarded the Titanic in Southampton on April 10, 1912, and was assigned first-class cabin C51.
His letter was postmarked from Queenstown, Ireland, one of the ship’s final stops before its tragic encounter with an iceberg off Newfoundland, which claimed the lives of about 1,500 people on its maiden voyage.
Despite surviving the ordeal, Gracie succumbed to complications from hypothermia and diabetes later that same year.
