A “poignant” postcard written by a passenger on the Titanic who died three days later when the luxury liner hit an iceberg is headed for the auction block.
Henry Aldridge & Son Ltd., an auction house in the United Kingdom that specializes in Titanic items, announced that the postcard will be part of a sale that will be held on Nov. 16.
According to the auction house, Richard William Smith, a passenger traveling in first class, wrote a postcard to a friend in Norwich, England. The message, written in pencil, states “Have had a fine run around to Queenstown. Just leaving for the land of stars and stripes, etc.” The postcard was dated April 11, 1912, and had a postmark of Cork.
The liner left Southampton and docked in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, the BBC reported.
The vessel then headed west toward the United States, where it hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean and sank on April 14, 1912. It was the Titanic’s maiden voyage.
Smith was one of approximately 1,500 people who died in the chilly waters, CNN reported.
Most Titanic postcards are either franked “Queenstown” or have the ship’s own postmark, according to the BBC. But the message posted by Smith, mailed to Mrs. Olive Dakin in Norwich, had a Cork postmark, making it a rarer piece of memorabilia, according to Henry Aldridge & Son Ltd.
“It is an incredibly powerful and poignant message,” Andrew Aldridge, managing director of Henry Aldridge & Son, told the BBC. “He had no idea of what was coming over the horizon approximately 80 hours later.”
The postcard is one of more than 300 Titanic-related items that will be sold in the auction.
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