Titanic passenger’s letter, written 4 days before sinking, soon to be auctioned off

2023-06-22 13:02:36

The handwritten letter from one of the few South American passengers on the Titanic, written a few days before the historic sinking of April 15, 1912, will be auctioned in Montevideo (Uruguay). The missive was written by the Uruguayan Ramon Artagaveytia Gomez to his brother Adolfo on April 11, 1912 and sent from Queenstown (Ireland) during the liner’s last stopover.

The letter will be on sale at a starting price of 12,000 dollars (around 11,000 euros), the auction house Zorrilla Subastas announced on Tuesday. The missive, property of the descendants of Adolfo Artagaveytia Gomez, is written on the letterhead of the British shipping company White Star Line, owner of the Titanic.

A letter written by a Uruguayan passenger on the Titanic will go on auction in Montevideo next week with a starting price of $12,000, an auction house has announced.#BillionaireAuction #Titanic https://t.co/5wDVYxO81R

— Billionaire (@bilyonaryo_ph) June 22, 2023

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Historic maritime objects put up for sale

“All I say is an understatement,” the 71-year-old first-class passenger wrote in his letter about the Titanic. “Everything is new and rich. The letter is accompanied by a postcard on which we see an elegant man with a cane and a hat, dated Evian, with the inscription: “A missive and an affectionate memory to my brother Adolfo. Ramon”.

The value of the lot is estimated between 15,000 and 25,000 dollars (some 13,700 and 22,900 euros), according to the person in charge of the catalog of the sale which will be held on June 30. Among the 800 pieces put up for sale are also around twenty objects (binoculars and a navy jacket in particular) from the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee, scuttled by its captain on December 17, 1939 after the battle of the Rio de la Plata.

The mysterious Titanic

The Titanic, which was to rally Southampton (United Kingdom) to New York (United States) sank after hitting an iceberg, causing the death of nearly 1,500 passengers and crew members out of the 2,224 on board – the one of the greatest maritime disasters of the 20th century. The wreck was found in 1985 650 km off the Canadian coast in the Atlantic Ocean.

The remains of the Titanic still fascinate enormously today. It was to admire it from a depth of 4,000 m that an American, a Frenchman, a Briton and two Pakistani-Britons dived this Sunday aboard a submersible which remained untraceable this Wednesday and for which significant means of research have been deployed.