A letter from one of the three Uruguayans traveling on the rms titanicwritten days before the famous shipwreck on April 15, 1912, will be auctioned off next week, the house reported Tuesday Zorrilla Auctionsfor a value that could reach $ 25,000.
The missive of Ramon Artagaveytia Gomez (1840-1912) to his brother Adolfo, dated April 11, 1912 and dispatched in queenstownIreland, at the last stop made by the transatlantic for mail delivery, will go on sale together with a dedicated photograph on the back, with a base price of $12,000.
“Everything I say about it is little,” says this 71-year-old agricultural businessman, a first-class passenger, when describing the luxurious ship. “Everything is new and delicious,” he adds, marveling at the size and quality of the ship, the food, and the attention received.
Little did he imagine then that he, who four decades earlier had survived the fire and sinking of the ship America in the Silver river, would perish by drowning in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Two other Uruguayans were part of the tragic maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic from Southampton, England, to New York, as well as two Argentines, a Cuban and a Mexican, the only Latin Americans on board.
The letter, which all these years has remained in the possession of the descendants of Adolfo Artagaveytia Gómez, is written on the letterhead and watermark of the British shipping company White Star Line. There are two pages with three handwritten pages, “originally a sheet of paper, with a damp stain,” according to the Zorrilla Auctions website.
It is accompanied by a photograph of an elegant gentleman with a cane and a hat, printed on a French postal letter, dated in Évian, France, on August 31, 1909, with the inscription: “A letter and affectionate memory to my brother Adolfo. Ramón “.
The value of the lot is estimated between 15,000 and 25,000 dollars, Guillermo González, in charge of cataloging the pieces, explained to AFP.
The auction, which will take place in Montevideo on Friday the 30th, it is part of an auction of 800 lots, which includes about twenty pieces of the Nazi battleship Admiral Graf Spee.
This ship was sunk by its captain on December 17, 1939, after the Battle of the Río de la Plata fought between the British and the Germans off the Uruguayan coast at the dawn of the Second World War.
González pointed out that the binoculars of the Admiral Graf Spee stand out, which a crew member took before the ship was dynamited, with a base price of $7,000, and the dress jacket of the machinist corporal Gottfried Link, crew member of the Third Reich ship, with base price of 1,500 dollars.
Source: Ambito
