Poignant letter from Titanic fetches record
A letter written by one of the Titanic’s passengers a day before the ship sank sells for $166,000 at an auction in England.
LONDON — A letter written by one of the Titanic’s passengers a day before the ocean liner sank has sold for 126,000 pounds ($166,000) at an auction in England.
It was a record price for a note written by someone on the ill-fated ocean liner.
The handwritten note, on embossed Titanic stationery, was penned by firstclass passenger Alexander Oskar Holverson on April 13, 1912 — the day before the ship hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic, killing more than 1,500 onboard.
Holverson, a salesman, was on the Titanic with his wife, Mary. He had intended to post it to his mother when they arrived in New York.
Auction house Henry Aldridge & Son, which specializes in Titanic memorabilia, said the letter was “the most important Titanic letter we have ever auctioned” because of its content, historical context and rarity.
In the letter, addressed to “My dear Mother” and stained with saltwater marks, Holverson described the Titanic as “a giant in size and fitted up like a palatial hotel.” He added: “The food and drink is excellent.”
He also mentions seeing millionaire John Jacob Astor sitting on a deck of the vessel: “He looks like any other human being even tho he has millions of money.”
In a poignant line, he also wrote: “If all goes well we will arrive in New York Wednesday AM.”
The letter, one of the last known to have been written on board by the disaster’s victims, was found in Holverson’s pocket notebook when his body was recovered.
His wife survived the disaster, Aldridge said. Who bought the letter? “I can’t tell you,” Aldridge said, “but it was a collector based in the U.K. who just collects iconic items from history.”
“This will go into a personal collection,” he added. “However, a lot of his items are in museums around the world. What he tends to do is to buy the items and put them on loan to museums for people to enjoy. That’s the general pattern so far.”
The record for any piece of Titanic memorabilia, Aldridge said, was “for the Titanic violin, which we sold four years ago for 1.1 million pounds ($1.4 million).”