A recovered postal slip from the Titanic sold at Spink yesterday for £5,980. The piece survived the catastrophic sinking of the Titanic thanks to one man – Oscar Woody, the mail clerk on the ship.
On the evening of the 14th April 1912 Woody and his colleagues took a break from their post room duties to celebrate Woody’s 44th birthday. During the festivities the Titanic collided with a giant iceberg and the post clerks dashed back to the post room only to find it already knee deep in water. Before jumping into icy water Woody did his best to save as much mail from the ship as he could. Oscar Woody was found dead on an iceberg clutching the bag of mail he abandoned ship with.
It is estimated that there were over 3400 bags of mail that sank with the Titanic which would have contained over 7 million letters, registered mail and packages with perhaps over $150,000 in money orders having ended up on the ocean’s floor.
Courtesy of http://www.spink.com
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