Molly Brown House debuts rare Titanic artifacts

Esteban L. Hernandez

Glass display case showing two aged handwritten letters mounted in clear sleeves, a small red flag atop one page, with a silver tray in the back. A label reads "Letter Sent from Titanic" (1912). — American writer Archibald Gracie's letter written onboard the Titanic in 1912 on display at the Molly Brown House Museum in Denver. Photo: Esteban L. Hernandez/Axios

Five days before the Titanic sank, American writer Archibald Gracie penned an unknowingly foreboding letter aboard the colossal ocean liner.

Zoom in: "It is a fine ship this, but I shall await my journey's end before I pass judgment on her," he wrote in a letter dated April 10, 1912, sending the letter a day later when the ship was docked in Queenstown, Ireland.

Gracie survived the sinking on April 15, 1912. Roughly 1,500 other souls were not as lucky.

The latest: The letter is on public display for the first time, making its historic debut at the Molly Brown House Museum this week along with other eerie but fascinating relics connected to the ship's tragic story.

Margaret Brown — better known as the Unsinkable Molly Brown — was among the shipwreck survivors, and her house in Denver's Capitol Hill neighborhood includes a permanent Titanic exhibit.

Also on display for the first time:

A journal recovered from victim Ernest Tomlin, a third-class passenger, with a single inscription on April 10, 1912: "Titanic."
A mortuary bag used by crews to collect personal effects from Frederick Sutton, a first-class passenger whose body was found by the MacKay Bennett, a ship chartered to recover bodies.
Items from a Launch Party hosted a year before the Titanic's maiden voyage are also part of the exhibit, including a menu and a room key.

If you go: The new artifacts will be on display through December.

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Molly Brown House debuts rare Titanic artifacts

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