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New York Times
27-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
Titanic Survivor's Letter, Written Aboard the Ship, Sells for Nearly $400,000
Days before the Titanic struck an iceberg, a first-class passenger, Col. Archibald Gracie, described the vessel in a letter written while on board: 'It is a fine ship but I shall await my journey's end before I pass judgment on her.' Colonel Gracie's journey on the Titanic had a catastrophic end, but he fared better than most. He was on the top deck of the ship, gripping a railing, as it plunged into the sea. He said he was 'swirled' under water before he got to a raft, where he spent hours floating on icy waters before being rescued. The letter he wrote was sold on Saturday at an auction for $399,000 (or 300,000 pounds), according to Henry Aldridge and Son, an auction house in Wiltshire, England. The auction house said the letter, written in neat, cursive handwriting, was addressed to an unidentified European ambassador, the great-uncle of the seller. The letterhead shows a triangular red flag with a white star and is printed with the words 'On board R.M.S. Titanic.' The letter was dated April 10, 1912, the day the ship set sail from Southampton, England. On April 12, it was postmarked in London, where it was received at the Waldorf Hotel. The Titanic struck an iceberg just before midnight on April 14 and sank the next day. The buyer of the letter was based in the United States, according to Andrew Aldridge, the managing director of Henry Aldridge and Son. The auction house did not publicly identify the buyer or the seller. Mr. Aldridge said in an email that the stories of the ship's passengers 'are told through the memorabilia' and that 'their memories are kept alive through those items.' The auction house had initially expected the letter to sell for up to 60,000 pounds, or nearly $80,000. Colonel Gracie, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, was a high-profile survivor of the Titanic disaster, in which about 1,500 people perished. He died eight months later, in December 1912, of complications from diseases, but his doctors and his family said that the real cause was that he had never recovered from the shock of the Titanic disaster, according to The New York Times. After Colonel Gracie was rescued, he began work on 'The Truth About the Titanic,' a book about his experience that was published posthumously. The New York Times review of the book said 'there is something effective in the very lack of directness and coherency in the narrative.' Colonel Gracie said in an interview with The New York Tribune that he had been on the top deck of the ship when it was hit by a wave that sent other people overboard. He managed to stay on and grabbed a brass railing. 'When the ship plunged down, I was forced to let go, and I was swirled around and around for what seemed an interminable time,' he said. 'Eventually I came to the surface to find the sea a mass of tangled wreckage.' He said he grabbed a wooden grating and then saw a canvas-and-cork raft. He made it onto the raft and began trying to rescue others. They eventually reached a rescue ship, R.M.S. Carpathia. 'The hours that elapsed before we were picked up by the Carpathia were the longest and most terrible that I ever spent,' Colonel Gracie said, according to The Tribune. 'Practically without any sensation of feeling because of the icy water, we were almost dropping from fatigue.' Colonel Gracie was an established figure in New York and Washington society. His father had been an officer in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Colonel Gracie was also a descendant of Archibald Gracie, who built the New York City mayor's official residence, Gracie Mansion, in 1799. After news of the Titanic's sinking reached the United States, and it was not known whether Colonel Gracie had survived, his wife, Constance Schack Gracie, was reported missing for unrelated reasons. Mrs. Gracie had not been on the ship, but had left town to avoid being subpoenaed in the lunacy trial of another society woman, Mary E. Gage, according to The New York Times. In the days after the Titanic disaster, the Gracies' daughter, Edith Gracie, was asked about the whereabouts of her mother, which she said she did not know, and about the fate of her father, The Times reported. She said Colonel Gracie had been in Europe recuperating from an operation and had said in a letter that he would return home with a much stronger constitution. 'It is too terrible to think of,' she said, 'but I am hoping against hope that he has come through the perils of the accident without harm.'
New York Times
10-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
The Forgotten Story of 6 Immigrants Saved From the Titanic
Has any tragedy been more exhaustively documented than the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic? In the 113 years since the liner struck an iceberg and plunged to the bottom of the frigid North Atlantic, more than 500 books have been published about the calamity, according to Encyclopedia Titanica, an online resource for aficionados. At least 16 films have also retold this tale of hubris, heroism, class conflict, doomed love and icy death. They range from a 1912 one-reeler starring Dorothy Gibson, an actress who survived the sinking, to a 1943 Nazi propaganda film that contrasts the bravery of a fictional German officer with the supposed cowardice of the British crew. Steven Schwankert's 'The Six' is an intriguing addition to the canon. A journalist, filmmaker and Sinophile, Schwankert stumbled onto this unexplored niche while researching a different tragedy. In December 1948, at the end of the Chinese Civil War, a ferry mysteriously blew up and sank in the Yangtze River, drowning 2,000 passengers. Schwankert's investigation into China's worst maritime disaster turned up passing references to Chinese passengers on the Titanic — but he could find nothing about their lives. 'Not one descendant of a Chinese passenger had come forward,' he writes. 'No one had raised their hand and said, 'My grandfather survived the Titanic. This is his story.'' Schwankert traveled across three continents, pored over ships' logs, studied official testimony, dug up local news reports and tracked down living relatives. The result is an engrossing blend of detective story, disaster narrative and social history of the Chinese diaspora at the turn of the 20th century. In the beginning, there were eight. All the men were in their 20s or early 30s at the time they embarked on their ill-fated voyage. And all seem to have come from Taishan province bordering the South China Sea, the impoverished epicenter of the Chinese global migration that had begun with the California gold rush and the building of the transcontinental railroad. They boarded the Titanic in Southampton as third-class passengers, bound for jobs as laborers on a merchant ship docked in New York. None left accounts of what happened that night, but Schwankert recreates their movements with remarkable precision. After the Titanic struck the iceberg, a watertight door locked into place in steerage, sealing off the main escape route. But the men found a corridor nicknamed 'Scotland Road' and clambered up a staircase to the aft boat deck. Four climbed into a collapsible lifeboat with about 40 others, including the Titanic owner J. Bruce Ismay, and dropped into the Atlantic minutes before the steamship sank. Another clambered into a smaller lifeboat. Three men, all friends with shared dreams of opening a business in America, put on life vests and jumped into the water. One, Fang Lang, lashed himself to a wooden door and hours later was hauled aboard a lifeboat that had turned back to hunt for survivors. The others almost certainly died of hypothermia. Schwankert captures the shameful treatment the men received after the rescue of the Titanic's passengers by another liner, the Carpathia. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882, had slammed shut the door to Chinese immigration, so government agents unceremoniously escorted the six to a waiting Europe-bound vessel in the East River. Stories circulated, fanned by other survivors' faulty recollections or deliberate distortions, that the three on the collapsible lifeboat had disguised themselves in women's clothes to get aboard, then kept out of sight until they reached the Carpathia. 'These were creatures on their way to New York,' The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, 'who, at the first sign of danger, had sprung into the lifeboats' and 'concealed themselves beneath the seats.' Schwankert goes to great lengths to disprove the allegation, even building a replica to show that concealment wouldn't have been possible. He also immersed himself, fully clothed, in a tank of 54-degree seawater to imagine how long Fang Lang could have survived in the Atlantic. Schwankert's prose can be workmanlike; he has a weakness for danglers and an odd attachment to the word 'gruesome.' Frustratingly, despite all his digging, he loses sight of most of the men soon after their rescue. Anti-Chinese prejudice in Canada and Britain, as well as the United States, consigned them to rootless lives, and numerous transliterations of their names made them even harder to trace. He manages to piece together in detail the life of only one of the six: Fang Lang, who lived as an illegal immigrant in Chicago, then Milwaukee; worked as a waiter, raised a family and became a U.S. citizen; he never seems to have talked about his experiences aboard the ship. In the 1997 blockbuster 'Titanic,' the director James Cameron used Fang Lang's survival story as the inspiration for the scene in which Rose, played by Kate Winslet, is pulled barely alive from the water. Schwankert's compelling account succeeds in rescuing him — and his confreres — a second time.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
3D scans of Titanic wreckage reveal new details about fateful ship's final moments
WASHINGTON – On the 113th anniversary of the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic, National Geographic is set to unveil what it calls an unprecedented look at history's most infamous maritime disaster. Using cutting-edge underwater scanning technology, the documentary offers a stunning digital model of the Titanic, accurate down to every rivet. In 2022, filmmaker Anthony Geffen and deep-sea mapping company Magellan completed a detailed 3D scanning project, which took nearly two years to analyze. According to National Geographic, the investigation challenges long-held assumptions about the events following the Titanic's collision with an iceberg. How The Titanic Was Taken Down By A Mirage The luxurious ship struck an iceberg less than 400 miles south of Canada about 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912, and sank within three hours of the collision. Of the 2,240 passengers and crew on board, more than 1,500 perished in waters that were estimated to be around 28 °F, causing rapid onset of hypothermia. One of the documentary's most notable findings is the discovery of an open steam valve in the wreckage, indicating that dozens of crew members stayed at their posts to keep the electricity flowing for as long as possible. The heroic effort allowed distress signals to be sent long after the ship struck the iceberg. However, being 370 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada, and about 1,200 miles from New York City, there were few ships in the vicinity capable of response. Did The National Weather Service Capture A Photo Of Bigfoot During A Pennsylvania Storm Survey? The documentary also sheds light on the Titanic's violent demise, which contrasts with the depiction in James Cameron's 1997 thriller "Titanic." "The Titanic didn't split cleanly in two—it was violently torn apart, ripping through first-class cabins where prominent passengers like J.J. Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim may have sought refuge as the ship went down," National Geographic stated. Modern-day audiences might recognize those passengers as portrayed by actors Jonathan Hyde and Michael Ensign - neither of whom survived the sinking. Additionally, experts presented evidence that exonerates First Officer William Murdoch, who has long been accused of abandoning his post. Watch: Newly Released Titanic Video From 1986 Shows Unprecedented Look At Iconic Shipwreck According to the documentary, it is believed that Murdoch and his crew were swept away by the sea and were unable to reach one of the few lifeboats on board. Because the luxury ocean liner was deemed "practically unsinkable," the Titanic only had about 20 lifeboats - far too few for everyone on board. The estimated capacity of the lifeboats was just under 1,200 people in a perfect scenario, well short of the 2,240 people aboard when the ship sank. The deep-water scans revealed that the wreck is deteriorating at a fast rate at some 12,500 feet below the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean. Billionaire Larry Connor is planning to explore the deep-sea shipwreck in 2026 using a submersible submarine, which has garnered significant criticism from governments and families with victims on article source: 3D scans of Titanic wreckage reveal new details about fateful ship's final moments
