Letter from Titanic sold for USD 166,000

The letter found on the body of a Titanic victim was sold on Saturday, October 21, at an auction for GBP 126,000 (USD 166,000).

As Reuters reports, this is a record price for correspondence from the doomed liner.

The letter written by first-class passenger Alexander Oskar Holverson to his mother is one of the last known to have survived the sinking.

It was written on embossed Titanic “on-board” stationary and describes his impressions of the palatial ship, praising the food and music.

– If all goes well we will arrive in New York Wednesday A.M. – Holverson wrote the day before the ship’s fateful encounter with an iceberg.

Holverson was a Minnesota-born salesman, who was traveling on the ship with his wife, Mary Alice, who survived the sinking.

In his letter Holverson also described his experiences rubbing shoulders with one of the ship’s most famous passengers.

– John Jacob Astor is on this ship – he said of the American financier and real-estate investor, who was one of the world’s richest men at the time.

The letter is one of the last known to have survived the sinking and still carries stains from its time in the Atlantic.

The Titanic was the largest ocean liner in service when it struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912, in the Atlantic while traveling from Southampton to New York.

More than 1,500 people died.

The letter was sold by the Holverson family in the southern English town of Devizes.

Iron keys from the Titanic also sold for 76,000 pounds, Reuters adds.

Titanic

Alexander Oskar Holverson

letter from Titanic