Rare Letter from Titanic Passenger Sold for Record $400,000

A letter written by Titanic passenger Colonel Archibald Gracie, days before the ship's sinking, sold for a record £300,000 (about $400,000) at an auction in the UK. The letter was purchased by an anonymous buyer at a Wiltshire auction house in England, exceeding its original valuation of £60,000 by five times.

The letter was described as "prophetic," with Gracie noting he would "wait until the end of the journey" before offering an opinion on the "magnificent ship." The document is dated April 10, 1912, the day Gracie boarded the Titanic in Southampton, five days before the ship sank after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

Gracie was one of about 2,200 passengers and crew aboard the Titanic, which was headed to New York. Over 1,500 lives were lost in the disaster. The first-class passenger wrote the letter from cabin number C51. It was sent when the ship docked in Queenstown, Ireland, on April 11, 1912, and its London postmark carries the date April 12.

The auctioneer managing the sale noted it achieved the highest price ever for correspondence penned aboard the Titanic.

Gracie's account of the sinking is among the most famous. In "The Truth About the Titanic," written after surviving the disaster, he recounted his experiences aboard the passenger liner. He described his survival by climbing onto an overturned lifeboat in the freezing waters. According to him, more than half of the men initially making it onto the lifeboat died from exhaustion or cold.

Although Gracie survived the disaster, his health suffered severely from hypothermia and physical injuries. He fell into a coma on December 2, 1912, and died from diabetes complications two days later.