Chaucer Auctions
Lot 245
1912 Titanic survivor Eva Hart signed rare 1992 Jugoslavia 80th ann FDC. Eva was seven years old when she and her parents boarded Titanic as second-class passengers on April 10, 1912. They had been booked on the SS Philadelphia, but a coal strike at Southampton that spring kept her from sailing and many of her passengers were transferred to Titanic. Eva's mother allegedly felt uneasy about Titanic and feared that some catastrophe would happen; the hubris of calling a ship unsinkable was, in her mind, flying in the face of God. With such fear, Eva's mother slept only during the day and stayed awake in their cabin at night fully dressed. Eva was sleeping when Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 pm on April 14. Her mother was awake at the time and felt "a slight bump". She immediately asked her husband to investigate the disturbance and he reluctantly left the cabin. Upon his return, he alerted her and Eva to the collision and, after wrapping Eva in a blanket, he carried her to the boat deck. Eva's father placed his wife and daughter in Lifeboat No. 14 and told her to "be a good girl and hold Mummy's hand". It was the last thing he ever said to her and the last time she ever saw him; he perished in the sinking and his body, if recovered, was never identified. Eva and her mother were rescued the following morning by the rescue ship RMS Carpathia. Soon after arriving in New York City on April 18, Eva and her mother returned to England, because her mother never wanted to set sail for New York in the first place. Eva was plagued with nightmares and upon the death of her mother in 1928, when Hart was 23, she confronted her fears head-on by booking a ticket on a passenger ship heading to Singapore, upon which she locked herself in her cabin for four straight days until the nightmares went away. Good condition. All autographs come with a Certificate of Authenticity. We combine postage on multiple winning lots and can ship worldwide. UK postage from £5.99, EU from £7.99, Rest of World from £9.99
