A letter written by a first-class passenger on the Titanic to his "wifey" has sold for a record 55,000 British pounds (almost $85,000) at an auction in Britain, local media said on Monday.
The letter, written by Adolphe Saafeld on three sides of the vessel's writing paper, was written five days before the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, claiming more than 1,500 lives.
An unnamed British museum paid the record sum for the letter, which was one of 350 lots of White Star Line memorabilia sold by Henry Aldridge and Son, a Wiltshire auctioneer.
"The content is superb. It gives a real first person perspective of what life was like on-board, through the eyes of a first-class passenger, right down to the food, the size of the cabin and the decoration," Andrew Aldridge, an auctioneer, was quoted as saying by the Economic Times.
"The weather is calm and fine, the sky overcast. There are only 370 First Class passengers. So far the boat does not move and goes very steadily. It is not nice to travel alone and leave you behind. I think you will have to come next time," the letter reads.
"But for a slight vibration, you would not know that you are at sea."
The Titanic, with 2,200 people on board, departed from the British port of Southampton on April 10, 1912, for its first and last voyage from Europe to the U.S. On April 14, it struck an iceberg in the Atlantic and sank in the early hours of April 15. At least 1,496 people were killed in the world's greatest maritime tragedy, and some 306 bodies were recovered. Only 706 people were rescued.
The shipwreck remained hidden under the Atlantic until an expedition led by U.S. oceanographer and marine geologist Robert Ballard discovered it on September 1, 1985, some 325 nautical miles away from the Canadian island, Newfoundland. Since then, some 5,000 pieces of memorabilia have been raised from the ocean floor by deep-sea treasure hunters, who reached the wreck by submarine.
MOSCOW, April 19 (RIA Novosti)
