BBC Antiques Roadshow guest refuses to sell Titanic letter worth incredible fortune

Daily Record

a day ago

Antiques Roadshow expert Hilary Kay met a guest whose father worked on the Titanic and survived the sinking of the vessel
Antiques Roadshow's Hilary Kay had an eye-opening encounter with guests whose father, Sidney Daniels, was employed as a plate washer on the Titanic at the age of just 18. Sidney was one of the survivors of the tragic sinking and his offspring brought along a letter he penned to the beloved BBC programme.
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Recalling the fateful night, his daughter stated: "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'."
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She then explained how Sidney had been tasked with waking sleeping guests on the ship, as she went on: "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 chimed in on the episode which was re-aired on Sunday night: "You can imagine the scene of chaos and despair because people realised there weren't enough lifeboats."
Sidney's son replied: "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'.
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"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'.
"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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"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."
The duo had brought along a letter which had remained tucked inside Sidney's uniform pocket when he leapt from the Titanic, the Express reports.
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Hillary, clearly stunned by the letter, began to speak about the artefact's significance and value: "It's an extraordinary item and anything related to Titanic has this extraordinary effect on people. It is an extraordinary moment to behold something which is so linked into an extraordinary moment in history."
She estimated its worth, saying: "We're talking about around £10,000, is the realistic value."