A letter written by a passenger on board the Titanic, mere days before the ship’s tragic sinking, has fetched a remarkable £60,000 at auction. Henry Price Hodges, a second-class passenger who ultimately perished in the disaster, penned the letter to a friend in Southampton after boarding the vessel.
The historic correspondence, dated 10 April 1912 and postmarked from Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland, went under the hammer at Henry Aldridge and Son of Devizes, Wiltshire, on Sunday. Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge confirmed the sale set a new record for an onboard letter written by a second-class passenger. The item had initially been estimated to sell for around £35,000.
In the letter, Hodges, who was travelling to Boston to visit relatives, described the ship and its atmosphere. He wrote of the fine weather and the lively scene, noting, "On the top deck there are about 200 boys (from 20 upwards) marching round and singing, others are playing dominoes & cards in the saloons, some reading, some writing. Everything is quite different to what you would expect to see at sea." He also commented on the ship's stability, stating, "You do not see anything of the movement of the ship." Poignantly, just over four days later, the Titanic lay at the bottom of the North Atlantic.
Hodges held ticket number 250643, which had cost him £13. Both he and third-class passenger Ernest Tomlin were among the approximately 1,500 lives lost when the Titanic sank on 15 April 1912. The letter offers a unique and personal window into the final moments of normalcy aboard the ill-fated liner.
The auction also saw another significant sale: an "extremely rare" US one dollar bill recovered from the body of Ernest Tomlin. The note, which had been sewn into his waistcoat, sold for £37,000, almost quadrupling its pre-sale estimate and also setting a new record price for such an item, according to Aldridge.