A POSTCARD written onboard the Titanic has sold at a Warwick auction house for nearly £9,000.
Warwick and Warwick auctioneers had valued the postcard at £20,000, but it failed to sell when it went under the hammer.
Some days following the auction a sale was agreed with a British buyer, who offered £8,600 for the item.
Brothers John and Stephen Wilkes put the postcard into the auction after discovering it in their mother’s house after she died. The card had been written to her cousin Ellen Green of Birmingham.
The postcard was written and posted on board the doomed liner – which sank in 1912 – by Sarah Daniels, who survived the disaster.
The message, written in pencil, read: “I wish you were here, it is a lovely boat and it would do you good. Am just going on deck.”
Sarah Daniels was born in London in 1875 and was employed as a maid to the wealthy Allison family of Montreal, Canada. She travelled on Titanic in 1st class with the family.
Prior to boarding she had been staying in Birmingham with Ellen Green.
When the ship hit the iceberg Sarah went out by herself to investigate. She was unable to convince the children’s nurses Hudson Allison or Alice Cleaver to join her, or that there was any danger. On deck the crew directed her to lifeboat 8.
She told the Manitoba Free Press “The boat I was in was not very crowded. There were only 4 men in the boat and they took the oars. There was no officer in the boat and a woman steered as we were rowing away in the darkness.”
The Allison family perished with the exception of baby Trevor, who was saved by his nursemaid.
