Letter written by Titanic passenger sells for £60k

A letter written by a man just days before he died when the Titanic sank has sold for a record £60,000.

Henry Price Hodges wrote the letter to a friend in Southampton after he boarded the ship as a second-class passenger.

The letter, posted in Ireland, went under the hammer at Henry Aldridge and Son of Devizes in Wiltshire on Sunday, selling for what auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said was "a record price for an onboard letter written by a second class passenger".

Aldridge added: "He describes the ship and fellow passengers and how they passed the time. Yet a little over four days later the Titanic was lying at the bottom of the north Atlantic."

Hodges was travelling to Boston to visit relatives and the letter, dated April 10, was postmarked Queenstown - the old name for the Irish port of Cobh.

It was addressed to Hector Young, of the Newtown Conservative Association in Southampton.

The letter, which was originally estimated to sell for £35,000, describes the fine weather and the good atmosphere on the ship.

Hodges also wrote: "You do not see anything of the movement of the ship, but the weather is very fine.

"On the top deck there are about 200 boys (from 20 upwards) marching round and singing, others are playing dominoes & cards in the saloons, some reading, some writing. Everything is quite different to what you would expect to see at sea."

Hodges held ticket number 250643 for the Titanic, which had cost him £13.

Also auctioned was an "extremely rare" US one dollar bill recovered from the body of third class passenger Ernest Tomlin, which fetched £37,000.

The note was originally sewn into his waistcoat.

Aldridge said it was another record price, and almost quadrupled its estimate.

Both Tomlin and Hodges both died in the sinking on 15 April 1912, a tragedy which claimed 1,500 lives.

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