A letter written by Titanic survivor Archibald Gracie, written while aboard the doomed ship, sold Saturday for $400,000 at Henry Aldridge & Son, blowing away the record for a Titanic letter by more than double.
Gracie boarded the ship on the initial stop in Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912, the day he wrote the letter to his uncle on a card with the header "On board RMS Titanic."
The letter was postmarked the next day, in Queenstown, Ireland, and arrived in London on April 12, where it eventually was delivered to the Waldorf Hotel in London.
Just days after the note arrived, in the early morning hours of April 15, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank.
Other Titanic items that achieved big prices at the England-based auction house included the items from the family collection of Titanic passenger Ernest Portage Tomlin.
Tomlin's manifest lists the USS Adriatic as his original ship, but it is crossed out for the Titanic. The 21-year-old was forced to switch ships due to a coal strike. When Tomlin's body was recovered, some of his affects were found sewn into his pocket. These items stayed in the family until this weekend.
The manifest sold for $119,500, while a ticket to his assigned diner table sold for $87,000. A silver certificate from 1899, which has a current market value of $1,700, sold for $22,500 — thanks to the story it was sewn into Tomlin's waistcoat to be opened when he arrived in America. The auction house noted the bill has "clear signed of immersion in the North Atlantic (Ocean)."
The violin used in the movie "Titanic" by the actor who played Wallace Hartley, the bandleader who instructed the band to play as the ship sank, sold for $69,000.
As for Gracie, he survived the wreck, thanks to latching on to an overturned collapsible boat. He then was rescued by the R.M.S. Carpathia.
Gracie achieved fame by writing the book, "The Truth About The Titanic." He died at 54, less than eight months after the tragedy, having not gotten past his complications with hypothermia. His last words were reportedly, "We must get them into the boats."
Letters written aboard the Titanic with the boat's letterhead are understandably extremely rare. The previous record for a Titanic-written note was an unsent letter by first-class passenger Alexander Oskar Holverson, found on his body, which sold for a record $166,000 in 2017.