A high-profile Titanic survivor's letter sold for a record $624,000 at auction.
The letter was written by first-class passenger Colonel Archibald Gracie. He also wrote ‘The Truth About the Titanic’, one of the most vivid accounts of the 1912 maritime disaster.
He described his experience of the 1912 tragedy that claimed 1,500 lives on the ship's maiden voyage to New York.
His now-sold letter that was dated 10 April 1912, the day he boarded, was postmarked for Queenstown, Ireland at 3.45pm on 11 April and London on 12 April.
The item sold for five times the expected price at Henry Aldridge and Son of Devizes, Wiltshire, England.
The seller’s great-uncle knew Gracie, and he received the four-sided letter at the Waldorf Hotel in London.
“It is a fine ship but I shall await my journeys' end before I pass judgment on her,” Gracie wrote, in an unsettlingly prophetic line.
“The Oceanic is like an old friend and while she does not possess the elaborate style and varied amusement of this big ship, still her sea worthy qualities and yacht like appearance make me miss her."
On the day of the sinking, April 14 1912, Gracie woke suddenly around 11.40pm, realising that the ship’s engines were no longer moving.
As the Titanic began to sink, he helped women and children on to lifeboats before he and a few dozen other men pulled themselves into an overturned collapsible lifeboat.
