Before the Titanic Sank, a Cheerful Passenger Wrote in a Postcard That He Was ‘Leaving for the Land of Stars and Stripes’

A historic postcard stamped April 11, 1912, is about to go to auction. On its back is a hand-scrawled message from British businessman Richard William Smith, expressing excitement about his imminent cruise to the United States. The front features an image of the boat set to take him there: the Titanic.

“It is an incredibly powerful and poignant message,” Andrew Aldridge, managing director of the auction house Henry Aldridge & Son, tells BBC News’ Steve Silk. “He had no idea of what was coming over the horizon approximately 80 hours later.”

Smith’s missive was postmarked in Ireland, the Titanic’s final stop before venturing out into the Atlantic Ocean. About three days after the postcard was sent, the White Star Line ship collided with an iceberg and sank about 400 miles from Newfoundland, killing Smith and more than 1,500 other passengers.

For just the first day of the Titanic’s maiden voyage—April 10, on which it departed from Southampton, England, then stopped at Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland—Smith was accompanied by a family friend named Emily Nicholls. She mailed the postcard for him after disembarking in Queenstown (now called Cobh), while Smith stayed onboard.

“Have had a fine run around to Queenstown,” wrote Smith on the card, which was addressed to a woman named Olive Dakin in Norwich, England. “Just leaving for the land of stars and stripes.”

As Aldridge tells CNN’s Lianne Kolirin, Smith was a tea broker who had “various interests in the U.S.” He sailed first class on the doomed ship.

Most postcards written by Titanic passengers were either stamped with “Queenstown” or the ship’s own postmark, per BBC News. But Nicholls sent Smith’s card from the city of Cork—about ten miles inland. Aldridge expects it will fetch between £6,000 and £10,000 at auction (roughly $7,600 to $12,600).

“It will be of interest to two different kinds of people,” Aldridge tells BBC News. “Titanic specialists, of course, but also stamp collectors who like postmarks. This one, dated ‘Cork 3:45 p.m., April 11, 1912,’ is exceptionally rare.”

The postcard is just one lot in Henry Aldridge & Son’s upcoming “Titanic, White Star and Transport Memorabilia” auction on November 16. Other items up for sale include archival photographs, a Titanic victim’s pocket watch and another pocket watch that three Titanic survivors gifted to Arthur Henry Rostron. Rostron was the captain of the RMS Carpathia, which arrived to rescue the Titanic’s passengers from the icy Atlantic several hours after the boat sank.

The auction house stages two Titanic sales every year. At its April auction, a photograph depicting an iceberg, which may have been the iceberg that sunk the vessel, sold for £17,500 (about $22,000). However, some artifacts brought in much more: A gold pocket watch belonging to John Jacob Astor IV, the Titanic’s richest passenger, went for £1.175 million (roughly $1.4 million).

The postcard—inked in faded cursive—is one of the upcoming auction’s more touching objects. As Aldridge tells CNN, “This is one of the last things that Mr. Smith wrote.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.