A water-stained letter from the Titanic written by an admirably realistic first class passenger on the ship’s stationary just sold for £126,000 at auction, a record sale for a note written on the ship.
The letter was written by salesman Alexander Oskar Holverson on April 13, 1912, just a day before the ship hit the iceberg that sank it. In the letter he describes the Titanic as a “giant ship…fitted up like a palacial hotel” and geeks out about seeing millionaire John Jacob Astor on the ship as well. “He looks like any other human being even tho he has millions of money,” he writes.
The most bummer line is certainly when Holverson, who was writing to his mother, estimates the Titanic’s arrival. “If all goes well we will arrive in New York Wednesday A.M,” reads the letter.
As any reader of Titanic.jezebel.com knows, all did not go well.
Holverson, who boarded the ship in Southampton, England, ultimately died, but his wife survived. The letter was recovered along with his body and sold to a private collector who is probably hiding among the Jezebel staff.
