New York - The survival story of an Irish passenger aboard the doomed liner Titanic was sold at auction in New York yesterday for $3,500 (£2,000), writes Ray O'Hanlon. The three scribbled pages dictated by Eugene Daly from Athlone, Co Westmeath, was one of a number of Titanic items on the block at Christie's in Manhattan.
Daly, a third class passenger who managed to help launch one of the last lifeboats, was hailed at the time as a hero because he serenaded passengers with his bagpipes.
Daly threw himself into the freezing water of the North Atlantic only minutes before the Titanic went down. He then managed to climb aboard a collapsible lifeboat which may have been the one he himself helped launch.
Later, aboard the liner Carpathia, the first rescue ship on the scene, Daly recounted his ordeal to Dr Frank Blackmarr who scribbled Daly's story onto three pages of medical stationary. "My God, if I could only forget those women's cries, if I could forget those hands and faces in the water" Daly said.