A letter penned by a Titanic passenger just days before the ship’s tragic sinking has sold for a record-breaking £300,000 (Ksh 51 million) at an auction in Wiltshire, UK.
Written by Colonel Archibald Gracie on 10 April 1912—the day he boarded the Titanic in Southampton—the letter was described as “prophetic.”
In it, Col Gracie tells an acquaintance he would “await my journey’s end” before offering judgment on the “fine ship.” The letter was posted the following day when the ship briefly docked in Queenstown, Ireland.
Sold at Henry Aldridge and Son auction house, the letter far exceeded its pre-sale estimate of £60,000 (Ksh 10.2 million).
Auctioneers said it fetched the highest price ever paid for any correspondence written aboard the ill-fated liner.
Col Gracie, a first-class passenger occupying cabin C51, was among the roughly 2,200 people aboard the Titanic.
More than 1,500 perished when the vessel struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic five days later.
Gracie’s survival story remains one of the most well-documented. He detailed his harrowing experience in his later book, The Truth About The Titanic, recounting how he survived by clinging to an overturned lifeboat.
Many others who initially escaped onto the boat succumbed to the freezing conditions.
Although Gracie survived the sinking, the ordeal left him in fragile health. Suffering from hypothermia and physical injuries, he fell into a coma on 2 December 1912 and died two days later.
The letter remains a poignant reminder of one of history’s most devastating maritime disasters.
