Letter recovered from body of Titanic passenger sold at auction for record price

A world record price has been paid for one of the last known letters to have been penned on the Titanic. Written to his mother on 13 April 1912 by American businessman and passenger Oscar Holverson, it fetched £126,000 at auction at auctioneers Henry Aldridge & Son. He was travelling on Titanic with his wife, Mary. She survived when the Titanic sank but Oscar Holverson died. When his body was recovered the letter was found inside a pocket book. The letter still has the sea water stains and the mark of the White Star shipping line.

The ill-fated ship passenger liner RMS Titanic was built in the city of Belfast (Irish: Béal Feirste) in the northeast of Ireland. Titanic sank during her maiden voyage in 1912. At the time, news of the terrible sinking of the Titanic spread around the world and its horror has held a fascination for people every since. Titanic, whose name was derived from Greek mythology and meant gigantic, set out on its maiden voyage across the North Atlantic from Southampton on 10 April 1912.

The ship called at Cherbourg in France and the Irish port of Cobh (Irish: an Cóbh), which in those days was known as Queenstown, on the south coast of County Cork. Titanic headed west towards New York. Four days into the crossing, at 11.40pm on 14 April 1912, about 375 miles (600 km) south of Newfoundland, she hit an iceberg. Titanic sank two hours and forty minutes later with the loss of 1,517 people. RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene some two hours later and was able to rescue the estimated 706 survivors from the ship's lifeboats.