Irish Titanic letter for auction
Monday August 21 2006
The letter was written on board the doomed White Star liner on April 10, 1912, after it left Southampton on the first leg of its only voyage.
The author was wealthy Edward Pomeroy Colley, with an address in Rathgar, Dublin, who was returning to to his mining interests on the west coast of Canada.
The letter is addressed to his sister-in-law, Edie, in India, and features the rare White Star trademark. Its descriptions of the vessel could propel it to a new world-record price for a letter linked to the Titanic when it goes under the hammer in Devizes, England, at the September sale of Henry Aldridge & Son in Wiltshire. It has been consigned on behalf of a pension fund. Colley, an extravagant figure descended from the Duke of Wellington, writes: "This is a huge ship. Unless lots of people get on at Cherbourg and Queenstown, they'll never half fill it.
"The dining room is full of little tables for 2, 3 and more in secluded corners. How I wish someone I liked was on board, but then nice people don't sit at tables for two unless they're engaged or married. I wonder my blue blood didn't tell me that?"
Mr Colley died when the ship sank less than five days later on his 37th birthday. "Our most distinguished passengers seem to be (famous English journalist) WT Stead, WW Astor (an error, intending JJ Astor, then reputedly the richest man in the world), Charles M Hays (Canadian railway magnate) and EP Colley (himself)," he writes.
Tongue firmly in cheek, the Irishman also refers to "the countess of something, but her blood is only black-blue", adding, "give me good red corpuscles, I seem to know more about them. And they circulate faster."
He was referring to one of the most famous passengers, Noelle Martha Leslie, the Countess of Rothes, who survived in lifeboat number eight and was "put to steering".
Of the Irish passengers, 79 survived while 44 died. There were a further 60 Irish people among the crew, of whom an even higher proportion died.
- Senan Molony
