{"id":1777,"date":"2014-04-27T09:48:05","date_gmt":"2014-04-27T09:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/?p=1777"},"modified":"2014-04-27T14:49:05","modified_gmt":"2014-04-27T14:49:05","slug":"letter-written-aboard-titanic-sells-for-200000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/letter-written-aboard-titanic-sells-for-200000\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter written aboard Titanic sells for $200,000"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Letter\"<\/a>A letter written by a passenger on the Titanic describing the “wonderful passage” \u2014 hours before the ship hit an iceberg \u2014 has sold at auction for 119,000 pounds ($200,000).
\nAuctioneer Andrew Aldridge said the handwritten note was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder at an auction in Devizes, western England.
\nThe price, which includes a fee known as the buyer’s premium, topped the pre-sale estimate of 100,000 pounds.
\nThe letter was written by second-class passenger Esther Hart on April 14, 1912.
\n“The sailors say we have had a wonderful passage up to now,” she said in the note to family in England.
\nHours later the passenger liner described as “practically unsinkable” hit an iceberg and sank, killing more than 1,500 people.
\nHart was among about 700 survivors.
\nHart survived, and so did the letter, which is expected to sell for up to 100,000 pounds ($168,000) at an auction in England on Saturday.
\nThe handwritten note on White Star Line notepaper was tucked inside the pocket of a sheepskin coat Hart’s husband Benjamin gave her as he put Esther and their daughter Eva in a lifeboat. The family had been traveling from England to Canada, where they planned to settle.
\nThe letter includes a postscript from Eva Hart, then aged 7: “Heaps of love and kisses to all from Eva.”
\nBenjamin Hart was among passengers and crew killed when the ship sank. Esther and Eva were rescued, along with some 700 others.
\nEsther Hart died in 1928.
\nEva Hart, who died in 1996, became a prominent Titanic survivor, critical of attempts to salvage the ship, which she considered a mass grave.
\nShe described the voyage, and her mother’s letter, in an autobiography, “Shadow of the Titanic.”
\nAuctioneer Andrew Aldridge said the letter was “quite simply the jewel in the crown of Titanic manuscript ephemera.”
\nFascination with the Titanic remains strong a century after the disaster, and prices for memorabilia from the ship have soared in recent years. In October a violin believed to have been played as the doomed vessel sank sold for more than 1 million pounds.<\/p>\n

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