Mystery and History Collide: Titanic Passenger’s Chilling First-Day Letter Fetches Unbelievable $399,000 at Auction
“When the ship plunged down, I was forced to let go, and I was swirled around and around for what seemed an interminable time,” Gracie later recalled in an interview with the New York Tribune. “Eventually I came to the surface to find the sea a mass of tangled wreckage.” Soon, however, Gracie made it into a lifeboat.
Wikimedia CommonsThe Titanic setting sail from Southampton, England on April 10, 1912, the day that Colonel Archibald Gracie wrote his letter.
Gracie, and the other 705 people who had survived the sinking of the Titanic, were rescued hours later by the RMS Carpathia, the one ship that did respond to the Titanic’s distress signal.
Gracie then returned to New York, where he spent much of his time writing The Truth About The Titanic. However, he never fully recovered from the trauma of the sinking, and died just months later on December 4, 1912, at the age of 54, from complications related to diabetes.
To this day, his letter remains a fascinating artifact that brings the heartbreaking story of the Titanic to life. When Gracie wrote it on April 10, 1912, he had no idea of the horrors to come — or how he would survive one of the worst disasters in modern history.
After reading about the letter written by Archibald Gracie days before the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, go inside the surprisingly complicated question of why the Titanic sank. Then, learn about some of the wildest conspiracy theories about the sinking of the Titanic.
Post Comment