Art News

Titanic letter to return to Belfast

LONDON (AP).- The descendants of a doctor who died on the Titanic said Tuesday they are delighted that a letter he penned days before the ship sank will return to his hometown, Belfast. John Edward Simpson’s family had appealed for a benefactor to buy the note, which was put up for auction earlier this month in Long Island, New York. It did not meet the reserve price of $34,000, Philip Weiss Auctions said, but a buyer who did not want to be named then bought it for an undisclosed sum after hearing about the family’s campaign to bring the letter to the Northern Irish city for public display. Simpson’s great-nephew John Martin said the note will soon return to Belfast, where the Titanic was built. “For it to be on its way back is just amazing and so appropriate now just ahead of the 100th anniversary of his death. We are so thankful to the benefactor,” he said. The surgeon wrote