Titanic passenger's letter with "prophetic line" sells for $399,000

A lettercard penned by one of the Titanic's most well-known survivors from onboard the ship, days before it sank, has sold for $399,000 at auction.

In the note, written to the seller's great-uncle on April 10, 1912, first-class passenger Archibald Gracie wrote of the ill-fated steamship: "It is a fine ship but I shall await my journeys end before I pass judgment on her."

The letter was sold to a private collector from the United States on Saturday, according to auction house Henry Aldridge & Son in Wiltshire, England. The hammer price far exceeded the initial estimate price of 60,000 pounds.

The letter is believed to be the sole example in existence from Gracie from onboard the Titanic, which sank off Newfoundland after hitting an iceberg, killing about 1,500 people on its maiden voyage.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge described it as an "exceptional museum grade piece."

"Not only is it written by one of the most important first-class passengers on Titanic, Colonel Archibald Gracie, [but] the letter itself contains the most prophetic line: 'It is a fine ship but I shall await my journey's end before I pass judgment on her,'" Aldridge said in a statement.

Gracie, who jumped from the ship and managed to scramble onto an overturned collapsible boat, was rescued by other passengers onboard a lifeboat and was taken to the R.M.S. Carpathia. He went on to write "The Truth about the Titanic," an account of his experiences, when he returned to New York City.

Gracie boarded the Titanic in Southampton on April 10, 1912, and was assigned first-class cabin C51. His book is seen as one of the most detailed accounts of the events of the night the ship sank, Aldridge said. Gracie did not fully recover from the hypothermia he suffered, and died of complications from diabetes in late 1912.

The letter was postmarked Queenstown, Ireland, one of two stops the Titanic made before sinking.

Henry Aldridge & Son put up dozens of Titanic items up for auction this month, including a pocket watch and a third-class ticket belonging to two passengers who both died in the disaster.

Pocket watches previously owned by Titanic passengers have sold for huge amounts at Henry Aldridge & Son's auctions before, with a bidder in November claiming one of them for $2 million. The price of that item had broken a record set earlier in the year, when the same auction house sold a different gold watch for about $1.46 million. In that case, the 14-carat object belonged to the wealthiest passenger on the Titanic, John Jacob Astor, whose net worth was around $87 million when the disaster happened in 1912.