Days before the Titanic hit an iceberg, a first -class passenger, Colonel Archibald Gracie, described the ship in a written letter while on board: “It’s a good ship, but I will wait for the end of my trip before judging it.”
Colonel Gracie’s trip at Titanic had a catastrophic end, but it was better than most.
He was on the upper deck of the ship, grabbing a railing, while getting into the sea. He said he was “swirling” underwater before reaching a raft, where he spent hours floating in frost waters before being rescued.
The letter was sold on Saturday at an auction for $ 399,000 (or 300,000 pounds), according to Henry Aldridge and Son, a auction house in Wiltshire, England.
The auction house said that the letter, written in ordered and italic writing, was addressed to an unidentified European ambassador, uncle grandfather of the seller. The letterhead shows a triangular red flag with a white star and is printed with the words “aboard RMS Titanic.”
The letter went with April 10, 1912, the day the ship sailed from Southampton, England. On April 12, London is killed, where he was received at the Waldorf hotel. Titanic hit an iceberg just before midnight on April 14 and sank the next day.
The buyer of the letter was based in the United States, according to Andrew Aldridge, the managing director of Henry Aldridge and his son. The auction house did not publicly identify the buyer or the seller.
Aldridge said in an email that the stories of the ship’s passengers “are told through memories” and that “their memories remain alive through those articles.”
Initially, the auction house had expected the letter to be sold for up to 60,000 pounds, or almost $ 80,000.
Colonel Gracie, a graduate from the United States Military Academy in West Point, was a high profile survivor of the titanic disaster, in which some 1,500 people perished.
He died eight months later, in December 1912, or complications of diseases, but his doctors and his family said that the true cause was that he had never recovered from the shock of the titanic disaster, according to the New York Times.
After Colonel Gracie was rescued, it was the work of “The Truth on Titanic”, a book about his experience that was posted posthumously. The review of the New York Times book said that “there is something effective in the lack of frankness and coherence in the narrative.”
Colonel Gracie said in an interview with the New York Tribune who had his leg on the upper deck of the ship when he was beaten by a wave that sent other people by board. He managed to stay and grab a brass railing.
“When the ship had lunch, I was forced to let it go, and I was turned around and around what seemed an endless moment,” he said. “Possible I came to the surface to find the sea a mass of tangled remains.”
He said he grabbed a wooden grid and then a canvas and cork raft. He reached the raft and the bee trying to rescue the ethers. Anyge arrived at a rescue ship, RMS Carpathia.
“The hours that passed before Cárpatia collected were the longest and most terrible that has never happened,” said Colonel Gracie, according to the Tribune. “Practical without feeling of feeling due to ice water, we were almost falling from fatigue.”
Colonel Gracie was a figure established in the New York and Washington society.
His father had been official in the duration of the Confederate Army of the Civil War. Colonel Gracie was also a descendant of Archibald Gracie, who built the official residence of the Mayor of New York City, Gracie Mansion, in 1799.
After the news of the titanic’s sinking arrived in the United States, and it was not known if Colonel Gracie had survived, his wife, Constance Schack Gracie, was reported as disappeared for unrelated reasons.
Mrs. Gracie had no legs on the ship, but she had left the city to avoid being summoned in the madness trial of another woman in society, Mary E. Gage, according to the New York Times.
In the days after the Titanic disaster, the daughter of the functions, Edith Gracie, asked about her mother’s whereabouts, who said she did not know, and about her father’s fate, The Times reported.
She said Colonel Gracie had bones in Europe recovering from an operation and had said in a letter that would return home with a much stronger constitution.
“It is too terrible to think,” he said, “but I hope that the hope that has gone through the dangers of the accident without damage has not happened.”
