Passenger's Letter Written Before Titanic Sank Sells for Rs 3.41 Crore: Here's What Makes It So Special

London (The Uttam Hindu): A letter written by a Titanic passenger has sold for a record Rs 3.41 crore (£300,000) at a UK auction. Colonel Archibald Gracie's letter was bought by an anonymous buyer on Sunday at the Henry Aldridge & Son auction house in Wiltshire.

According to media reports, this letter was bought at a price five times more than the estimated price of 60,000 pounds. This letter is called 'prophetic'. In fact, in this, Colonel Gracie tells an acquaintance that he will 'wait for the end of his journey' before passing judgement on the 'good ship'. This letter was written on 10 April 1912, the day he boarded the Titanic in Southampton, five days before the ship sank after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic. Colonel Gracie was one of the approximately 2,200 passengers and crew members aboard the Titanic ship going to New York. More than 1,500 people were killed in this accident.

The letter was written by a first class passenger from cabin C51. It was posted when the ship docked in Queenstown, Ireland on April 11, 1912. It also had a London postmark of April 12. The auctioneer who helped in the auction said that this letter is worth more than any letter written on the Titanic. Colonel Gracie later wrote a book called 'The Truth About the Titanic', in which he recalled his experience on the ship. In it, he told how he survived by boarding a lifeboat that overturned in icy water. According to him, more than half of the people who reached the lifeboat died of exhaustion or cold.

Although Colonel Gracie survived the disaster, his health was badly affected by hypothermia and injuries. On 2 December 1912 he went into a coma and died two days later due to complications from diabetes.