A postcard written by the Titanic’s wireless operator could sell for up to $ 15,000

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Written by Ali program, CNN

A postcard written by a crew member of the RMS Titanic a few weeks before it sank is up for auction and could net $ 15,000.

Jack Phillips, the ship’s senior wireless operator, wrote the postcard to his sister Elsie in March 1912, while at the port of Belfast, Ireland, where the Titanic was being built. Construction was completed in late March and it left the dock on April 2, 1912.

Written on a 5.5-by-3.5-inch postcard, the correspondence features an image of the Titanic during construction and is postmarked in Belfast.

Part of the card reads: “Very busy working late. I hope to leave on Monday and arrive in So’ton (Southampton) on Wednesday afternoon. I hope things are going well.”

The message ends with the words “Love, Jack.”

The postcard features a picture of the Titanic in Belfast.

The postcard features a picture of the Titanic in Belfast. Credit: Courtesy RR Auction

“Phillips often chose postcards with the ship he served,” said Bobby Livingston, executive vice president of RR Auction in Boston, which sells the card.

“According to our research, only five of the 300 postcards Elsie kept had a relationship with the Titanic, and only two had the ship as a photo on the front, making this an exceptionally rare example,” Livingston said in a statement.

Livingston says Phillips is a forgotten hero who saved many lives when the Titanic began to sink. Phillips worked tirelessly to send messages to other ships asking for their help in rescuing passengers and crew.

On the night of April 14, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean that would lead to the deaths of more than 1,500 passengers and crew. According to RR Auction, Phillips, 25, left the ship when water flooded his feet. He ended up on an overturned folding lifeboat, where he would die from exposure to severe cold.

The Phillips postcard auction will close on April 14. RR Auction says the postcard will be an estimated $ 15,000.

This isn’t the first sale of Titanic relics. In 2015, a first-class lunch menu from the luxury ship was sold at auction for $ 88,000, along with a letter to a man who allegedly bribed the crew of a lifeboat to row away from the ship rather than save more people for $ 7,500.

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