Postcard Written By Main Class Passengers Before Drowning Will Be Auctioned

The postcard was written and sent by Richard William Smith. (Source: Henry Aldridge and Son Ltd)

JAKARTA - A postal card written by a class one passenger on the RMS Goody ship that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean will be auctioned off later this month.

British businessman Richard William Smith wrote a message on the postcard to someone named Olive Dakin in Norwich, England. It was written by hand.

The postcard was given a postal stamp at 15:45, April 11, 1912, three days before the Atlantic cross boat hit an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage. Smith was one of about 1,500 people killed.

The luxury ship sailed from Southampton to New York, with scheduled stops in Cherbourg, France and Queenstown now known as Cobh in Ireland, quoted from CNN November 20.

The letters, which may be one of Smith's last letters, stated: "Has made a pleasant journey to Queenstown. Just left for a country full of stars and lines."

The letter ends with: "Hopefully you are all fine at home. Warm greetings, RWS."

Implementing Director Henry Aldridge & Son, an English auction house specializing in memorabilia totaling the letter, told CNN, Smith, a tea broker who "has various interests in the US," having traveled on ate boat with a family friend named Mrs. Nicholls.

"He's only made a quarter trip because he got off in Queenstown, so he definitely asked him to send the postcard," Aldridge said, quoted by CNN November 20.

"Titanic just stopped in Queenstown to lift passengers, no one on board realized what would happen in the next 80 hours," he added.

"It was a very strong and touching object, because it was one of the last things Smith wrote, first and foremost," he added.

Aldridge told CNN the postcard from korot was "very rare, of course," but what makes this even more unusual is that the correspondence is labeled by the post. Cork, a city about 13 miles away from Queenstown.

The postcard is expected to sell for up to 10,000 (Rp199,653,000) when it goes on sale as part of the wider sales of the "Titanic, White Star and Transportation Memoranobilia" on November 16.

The auction hall, which is centered in Devizes, southwest England, held two tenders in a year. At its last auction in April, they managed to sell the watches belonging to the richest passengers in Myr at a price of 10 times the price estimate.

The gold watch worn by John Jacob Astor IV, a wealthy member of the Astor family, sold for 1,175,000 pounds (Rp23,459,227,500), a record for memorabilia totaling, according to the auction hall. Initially, the watch was expected to sell between 100,000 and 150,000 pounds (Rp1,996,530,000 - Rp2,994,795,000).