Titanic letter mailed before ships infamous sinking sells for nearly $400K at auction

A lettercard written on the Titanic by one of the shipwreck’s best known survivors has sold for a whopping $399,000.The letter was written days before the ill-fated steamship tragically went down in the north Atlantic Ocean after colliding with an iceberg, killing around 1,500.A private collector from the US won Saturday’s bidding war, according to auction house Henry Aldridge & Son in Wiltshire, England.The “museum grade” letter was penned by first-class passenger Col.Archibald Gracie, and mailed on April 10, 1912, from Southampton.The letter was postmarked Queenstown, Ireland, however, one of the ship’s two scheduled stops before sinking.“It is a fine ship but I shall await my journey’s end before I pass judgment on her,” Gracie, 54 at the time, wrote in the prophetic letter.Gracie survived the wreck by jumping from the sinking ship and swimming to an overturned collapsible boat.

He was later rescued by other passengers aboard a passing lifeboat.He later wrote a book called “The Truth about the Titanic.”Gracie’s father had been a Confederate officer during the Civil War, and his great-grandfather built Gracie Mansion, the current official residence of New York City’s mayor.Gracie was returning to New York after traveling to Europe earlier in 1912.He suffered from the effects of hypothermia long after the shipwreck, and, months later, become the first adult Titanic survivor to die.The cause of death was listed as diabetes complications.With Post wires...