Reuters/ Titanic
The ship of dreams (and nightmares), has been brought back to life through one survivor’s story.
Laura Francatelli’s account of escaping the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic in 1912 has sold for £20,000 ($31,000) at auction. (Learn more about The Titanic Discovery.)
The story, which was published for the first time in early October, was bought by an Eastern European collector at auction. Francatelli’s tale describes the urgency and fear that manifested on board the Titanic during her final hours, “There was an awful rumbling when she went. Then came the screams and cries. I do not know how long they lasted.”
Francatelli, who was 31 at the time, was traveling with baronet Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon and his wife Lady Lucy Christiana, as his secretary. She boarded one of the last lifeboats which contained just five passengers and seven crew members, whom on hearing the screams, refused to go back to search for more survivors.
Francatelli recounts how Duff-Gordon, a prominent Scottish landowner and sportsman, gave the crew members £5 ($7.87) each for saving their lives, a wage which some have described as “blood money.” Her employers refused to go into a lifeboat at first because Duff-Gordon was not allowed on board, as they were designated for women and children only. But they were then offered places on a smaller rowing boat. She said they “were a long way off” when they saw the Titanic go right up at the back and plunge down. “We had hardly any talk. The men spoke about God and prayers and wives. We were all in the darkness,” she wrote as the survivors held tight to each other for warmth and awaited rescue ship the Carpathia. (See TIME’S Top 10 Miraculous Rescues.)
1,521 passengers were killed in 1912 when the grandest ship in history struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage to New York.