Antiques Roadshow expert shares huge value of Titanic letter but guest refuses to sell

Daily Mirror

4 hours ago

Antiques Roadshow expert Hilary Kay met with a guest whose father Sidney Daniels was hired to work on the Titanic as a plate washer at the age of 18
Antiques Roadshow's Hilary Kay had an emotional encounter with a guest whose father, Sidney Daniels, was employed as a plate washer on the Titanic at just 18 years old.
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Sidney was one of the survivors of the tragic sinking, and his daughter brought along a poignant letter he penned to the beloved BBC series.
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She recounted: "It was a Sunday, he was sound asleep, there was a banging and shouting and it was the night watchman. They were all a bit bleary-eyed because at first they thought it was a drill.
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"It wasn't until he got up on deck, there were hardly any people around at first and then officers came and turned to him and said, 'Go to these cabins.' Of course it was hard to wake people, they were asleep.
"Some reacted in different ways. One or two said 'What does this young man know? He's 18, the boat is unsinkable. We're not going up on deck.' Others were saying, 'We've got children, they're going to get a chill if they go up on deck.' So he helped the children with the lifejackets and ushered them up on deck."
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Hilary reflected on the harrowing event, adding: "You can imagine the scene of chaos and despair because people realised there weren't enough lifeboats."
Relaying the harrowing tale of survival, one of Sidney's kin recounted: "That was his job, to try and get people into the lifeboats and the water was rising all of the time. When all the lifeboats had gone, the water was up around his knees and he thought, 'It's time to go.' So he dived off the side of the boat, swam away from it, came to a lifebelt and to my Dad's mind, it was too close to the boat, he was afraid when the boat went down, the suction would take them down so he said to this chap, 'It's no good here, let's swim away.'".
They continued with the gripping narrative: "Apparently this chap followed him and they just kept swimming. He said he saw a star in the sky which he thought was his mother and swam towards this star and eventually came to this life raft which was upside down and managed to cling onto that."
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The story took an emotional turn as they shared: "When he was on there, he said, 'I'm tired, I want to go to sleep,' and the chap next to him said, 'Don't go to sleep lad, if you do, it will be your last.' So they sat there singing hymns trying to pass the time away."
Accompanying their visit, the relatives brought a poignant piece of history - a letter from Sidney's uniform pocket as he leapt from the Titanic, reports the Express.
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Expert Hilary weighed in on the artefact's significance and value: "It's an extraordinary item and anything related to Titanic has this extraordinary affect on people. It is an extraordinary moment to behold something which is so linked into an extraordinary moment in history."
She estimated it's worth: "We're talking about around £10,000, is the realistic value."
Upon hearing the valuation, the guest firmly stated: "It's very nice but it's not going out the family, it's going to a museum."
Antiques Roadshow is broadcast on Sundays at 8.15pm on BBC One.