Jack Phillips wrote it to his sister at 11 Farncombe Street on 6 April 1912, days before Titanic sailed. It is estimated at £15,000 to £25,000 on 21 November.

A postcard that Jack Phillips, the Titanic’s senior wireless operator, sent home to his sister in Farncombe four days before the ship sailed is to be auctioned on Saturday 21 November.

Henry Aldridge & Son, the Devizes auction house, has given it an estimate of £15,000 to £25,000. It is lot 297 in the firm’s sale of Titanic, White Star, transport and 20th century icons, which starts at noon.

What the card says

The card is a photograph of the Titanic in dock, captioned “S.S. Titanic at Southampton”. It is postmarked Southampton, 3.30pm on 6 April 1912. Phillips wrote:

“Thanks very much for your letter. Having glorious weather, went to Cowes yesterday. Will write later before we sail.”

He signed it “Love all, Jack”. He addressed it to “Miss Elsie Phillips, 11 Farncombe St., Godalming”. The ship left Southampton four days later, on 10 April.

The auction house calls it “quite simply one of the rarest postcards of its type in existence”, because Phillips wrote it from the Titanic itself and it carries a picture of the ship. Its catalogue describes the condition as “very good to fine”, with light soiling, a few bends and some creasing.

The card has been in collections in the United States. The catalogue lists its provenance as the Ken Schultz collection and The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia, in 1998.

Black and white photo postcard of the Titanic moored at Southampton, captioned S.S. Titanic at Southampton, with the photographer's name Willsteed in the corner
The picture side of the card: the Titanic at Southampton, by the photographer Willsteed. Photo: via Henry Aldridge & Son.

The address is where he was born

11 Farncombe Street was the Phillips family home. According to Godalming Museum, Jack was born there on 11 April 1887. His father managed Gammons, a draper’s shop, and the family lived above it. The museum says the house no longer stands.

Elsie was one of Jack’s older twin sisters. The museum says neither twin married.

The museum’s account of his life in the town:

  • he went to a private school in Hare Lane, then St John’s Street School next to St John’s, Farncombe, where he sang in the choir
  • he went on to Godalming Grammar School, a building that is now the public bar of the Red Lion
  • from 1902 he worked as a telegraphist at the town’s Post Office in the High Street, now HSBC, where he learned Morse code
  • in 1906 he joined the Marconi Company and went to sea

He died after the sinking on 15 April 1912, four days after his 25th birthday. The auction catalogue says he ended up on an overturned collapsible lifeboat and died of exposure. Harold Bride, the junior wireless operator who survived, remembered him as “the man who saved us all”.

Where to see Godalming’s memorials to him

You do not need £25,000 to see the town’s own record of Jack Phillips. Godalming Museum lists:

  • the Phillips Memorial Cloister, in Phillips Memorial Park between the River Wey and the parish church. It opened on 15 April 1914, two years to the day after the sinking, with a garden by Gertrude Jekyll and a brick cloister by Hugh Thackeray Turner
  • the family grave in Nightingale Cemetery, refurbished by Godalming Town Council in 2002 with an obelisk in the shape of an iceberg
  • a brass plaque in St John’s, Farncombe, the church where he sang in the choir
  • a blue plaque in Farncombe, unveiled in 2017 to mark his birthplace
  • an oil portrait of him by Ellis Martin, in the museum’s own collection

The museum, at 109a High Street, also sells a Jack Phillips Trail leaflet for a walk round the town.

What it means for you

The sale is open to anyone. You can bid in the room at The Old Emporium, 6/7 St John Street, Devizes, or online, by phone or with a commission bid, according to the auction house.

Fees are on top of the hammer price. The lot page lists a buyer’s premium of 28.2%, including VAT, and an online commission of 3.6%, also including VAT. At the low estimate of £15,000, the premium alone adds £4,230.

The same sale has another lot with a Phillips link. Lot 253 is a set of eight Dutch magic lantern slides of the disaster, one of them a close-up of Jack Phillips, estimated at £1,000 to £1,500.

We will report what the postcard sells for after 21 November.

Sources