Watch given to captain who saved 700 Titanic passengers sells for £1,560,000

A golden pouch ticker presented to the skipper of a vessel which rescued much than 700 passengers from the Titanic has sold for a record-breaking £1.56 million.

It was the highest magnitude ever paid for Titanic memorabilia, auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Son, of Devizes, Wiltshire, said connected Saturday, and went to a backstage collector successful the US.

The erstwhile grounds was acceptable successful April erstwhile different golden pouch watch, recovered from the assemblage of the richest antheral connected the ship, John Jacob Astor, sold for £1.175 cardinal astatine the aforesaid auction house.

Both merchantability figures see fees and taxes paid by the buyer, the auctioneers said.

Mr Astor was 47 erstwhile helium went down with the vessel successful 1912, aft seeing his caller woman Madeleine connected to a lifeboat.

The ticker sold connected Saturday was fixed to Captain Rostron by Mrs Astor and 2 different widows of high-profile and affluent businessmen, who were besides mislaid erstwhile the vas sank.

The 18-carat Tiffany & Co timepiece bears an inscription speechmaking ‘Presented to Captain Rostron with the heartfelt gratitude and appreciation of 3 survivors of the Titanic April 15th 1912 Mrs John B Thayer, Mrs John Jacob Astor and Mrs George D Widener’.

Captain Rostron received the acquisition from Mr Astor’s woman astatine a luncheon astatine the family’s mansion connected Fifth Avenue, New York, according to the auction house.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said: ‘It was presented principally successful gratitude for Rostron’s bravery successful redeeming those lives, due to the fact that without Mr Rostron, those 700 radical wouldn’t person made it.’

Mr Aldridge said the merchantability demonstrated the ‘enduring fascination’ with the communicative of the Titanic.

He added: ‘For historians, they are precise funny successful the nuts and bolts of Titanic, if you like.

‘She’s 882 feet long. She weighs 46,000 tons, etc, etc, etc.

‘For collectors, it’s a antithetic animal, they are funny successful people.

‘Every man, pistillate and kid had a communicative to tell, and those stories are told implicit a period aboriginal done the memorabilia.’

The violin that was played arsenic the vessel sank held the grounds for the highest magnitude paid for Titanic artefacts for 11 years, aft being sold for £1.1 cardinal successful 2013, the auctioneers said.

Mr Aldridge said the information that this grounds has been breached doubly successful the past twelvemonth illustrated that determination is an ‘ever-decreasing proviso and an ever-increasing demand’ for memorabilia related to the ship.

Prices for the artefacts are going up ‘exponentially’, helium said.

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