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ILL-FATED: The liner Titanic, which sank with the loss of so many lives.

A piece of history which shows how the surviving crew members of Titanic were callously treated by the ship's owners has been valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds.

A London auction house has reportedly put a $1.7m (£850,000) price tag on a letter which shows that the entire crew of the ill-fated liner was sacked by the ship's owners as soon as news of the sinking reached Britain.

This tactic was adopted in order to save paying out thousands of pounds in wages to the survivors.

The revelation about the unpublished 26-page document coincides with a Titanic exhibition which is being held at Tarragona, on Spain's east coast.

It was sent by the White Star Line to survivor Alexander James Littlejohn, who was working as a first class steward aboard the stricken liner. it was passed to the Titanic Foundation, which is staging the exhibition around the world, by Mr Littlejohn's grandson, Phillip Littlejohn, who lives in Maidenhead, Berkshire.

The letter had been in the family's possession ever since it arrived at his grandfather's home in Southampton in 1912 following the liner's sinking with the loss of 1,500 lives after colliding with an iceberg on her maiden voyage to New York.

Mr Alexander Littlejohn, whose address at the time of the tragedy was given as Western Terrace, Chapel Road, Southampton, would have received monthly wages of about £3.75 at the time.

The unnamed auction house had put the value of the document at seven figures, said Jesus Ferreiro, international president of the Titanic Foundation.

"It shows for the first time that the crew were all sacked immediately news of the sinking of Titanic arrived," he said.

The document was not on display at Tarragona for insurance reasons, but was expected to go on show when the exhibition moved to Berlin as part of its world tour. The letter remained the property of the Littlejohn family and was to be returned to them when the tour ends in December.

The letter stated that Mr Littlejohn embarked in the Titanic at Southampton on April 10, 1912, and disembarked "on the high seas" on April 15, 1912 - the day the news of the sinking the night before reached White Star Line.

Mr Littlejohn was rescued in Lifeboat 13, the same boat containing Hampshire woman Millvina Dean, the youngest of the sinking's 700 survivors, who was just a baby at the time of the disaster.

Millvina, who lives in Woodlands, is now the last remaining Titanic survivor.

Tell us your Titanic memories. Were your relatives aboard? Email: keith.hamilton@dailyecho.co.uk

11:30am Friday 25th July 2008

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