The letter, which is estimated at £60,000-80,000, was handwritten on oversized, embossed on-board Titanic stationery by businessman and ‘first-class’ victim Alexander Oskar Holverson. Intended for his mother, it was written a day before the ship hit the iceberg on April 13, 1912.
In it he wrote: This boat is giant in size and fitted up like a palatial hotel… If all goes well we will arrive in New York Wednesday A.M. I am sending you a postcard of the ship and also a book of postcards showing the inside… Mr. and Mrs John Jacob Astor is on this ship. He looks like any other human being even tho he has millions of money. They sit out on deck with the rest of us…
Holverson’s body, along with his pocket book and this letter, was recovered by the CS Mackay-Bennett and returned to his family. The letter has remained in the family since.
The auction house said the letter “was carried by its author into the Atlantic and, thence, onto the body recovery ship and shows evidence of its immersion in salt water”.
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