‘Poignant’ postcard from excited Titanic passenger up for auction

A postcard written by a first-class passenger on the Titanic will go up for auction later this month.

Richard William Smith, a British businessman, scrawled a message in pencil to a Mrs Olive Dakin in Norwich, England.

The card is postmarked 3.45 p.m., April 11, 1912 – three days before the transatlantic liner struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage. Smith was one of around 1,500 people who perished.

The card, written in pencil by Richard William Smith, was sent from Cork, Ireland on April 11 1912. 

Henry Aldridge and Son Ltd

The luxury liner was sailing from Southampton to New York, with scheduled stops in Cherbourg in France and Queenstown – now known as Cobh – in Ireland.

The correspondence, which is likely to have been among Smith’s last, states: “Have had a fine run around to Queenstown. Just leaving for the land of stars and stripes.”

It signs off: “Hope you are all quite well at home. Kindest regards, R.W.S.”

Andrew Aldridge is the managing director of Henry Aldridge & Son, a UK auctioneer specializing in Titanic memorabilia, which is selling the item.

He told CNN that Smith, a tea broker who “had various interests in the US,” had been traveling aboard Titanic with a family friend called Mrs Nicholls.

“She was only going a quarter of the way as she was getting off in Queenstown, so he must have asked her to post the card,” Aldridge said.

“Titanic had just stopped in Queenstown to take on a load of passengers – little was anyone onboard aware what was on the horizon just 80 hours or so into the future,” he added.

“It’s a very powerful and poignant object because this is one of the last things that Mr Smith wrote, first and foremost.”

Aldridge told CNN that postcards from the Titanic are “very rare, quite naturally,” but what makes this even more unusual is that the correspondence is postmarked Cork, a city about 13 miles away from Queenstown.

The postcard is expected to fetch up to £10,000 ($12,900) when it goes on sale as part of a wider “Titanic, White Star and Transport Memorabilia” sale on November 16.

The auction house, which is based in Devizes, southwest England, holds two Titanic auctions a year. At its most recent auction in April, it sold a watch belonging to the richest passenger on the Titanic for 10 times its estimate.