A letter written aboard the Titanic by a passenger who would later survive its sinking sold for $399,000 at auction on Saturday, five times its expected price and establishing a record for correspondence from the ill-fated vessel.
The letter, penned by Col. Archibald Gracie on April 10, 1912, contains what auction officials described as an eerily prophetic statement about the ship. “It is a fine ship,” Gracie wrote to a European ambassador, “but I shall await my journey’s end before I pass judgment on her.”
Just five days after writing those words, Gracie would find himself fighting for survival in the freezing North Atlantic after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, killing approximately 1,500 of the vessel’s 2,200 passengers and crew.
The letter was sold by Henry Aldridge and Son, an auction house in Wiltshire, England, where the bidding concluded at 300,000 pounds, equivalent to $399,000. The buyer, a private collector from the United States, has not been publicly identified.
Andrew Aldridge, the auction house’s managing director, described the letter as “an exceptional museum grade piece” and noted it is believed to be the only surviving correspondence from Gracie written aboard the Titanic.
Gracie, a wealthy American real estate investor and West Point graduate, managed a remarkable escape from the sinking vessel. As the ship plunged into the ocean, he was on its top deck gripping a railing. After being swirled underwater by the suction, he eventually made his way to an overturned collapsible lifeboat where he clung with about a dozen other men. According to historical accounts, approximately half of those who reached this makeshift raft died from exhaustion or extreme cold before rescue arrived.
The first-class passenger boarded the Titanic at Southampton on its maiden voyage and was assigned cabin C51. After his rescue by the ship Carpathia, Gracie returned to New York where he wrote a detailed personal account of the disaster that historians regard as one of the most comprehensive firsthand records of the tragedy.
The auction house had initially valued the letter at approximately $80,000. The letterhead displays a triangular red flag with a white star and is printed with “On board R.M.S. Titanic.” Written in neat cursive handwriting, the letter bears postmarks showing it was received at London’s Waldorf Hotel on April 12, 1912.
Despite surviving the shipwreck, Gracie never fully recovered from the physical trauma he endured. He died in December 1912, just eight months after the disaster, due to complications from diabetes, though his doctors and family maintained that he had never recovered from the shock of his Titanic experience.
The auction house has previously sold other significant Titanic artifacts, including a violin believed to have been played by bandleader Wallace Hartley as the ship sank. That instrument fetched over $1.6 million in 2013, setting what was then a record for Titanic memorabilia.
Interest in artifacts from the Titanic disaster remains strong more than a century after the tragedy, with collectors willing to pay substantial sums for authentic items connected to the ship and its passengers.
