It’s been well over a century since the tragic sinking of a mighty ocean liner on April 15, 1912, yet our obsession with the Titanic lives on. Super fans will be excitedly perusing the top lots going under the hammer in a dedicated online sale later this month organized by Henry Aldridge & Co. auctioneers in England.
These include a postcard sent home by one passenger who went down with the ship just three days later and a cherished pocket watch recovered from the body of another passenger who also sadly died.
Carrying an illustration of RMS Titanic looking majestic on calm seas, the unique postcard’s other side still bears the scrawled pencil message that Richard William Smith wrote to a friend while onboard the ship. “Just leaving for the land of stars and stripes,” he told her.
The postcard managed to survive the ship’s sinking, most likely because Smith’s friend Emily Nicholls disembarked at Queenstown, now known as Cobh, in southern Ireland. According to the postmark, she posted the missive from Cork at 3:45 p.m. on April 11, 1912. The unusual item carries an estimate of £6,000-£10,000 ($7,700-$12,900).
Postcard sent from the Titanic in 1912. Image courtesy of Henry Aldridge & Son.
“It will be of interest to two different kinds of people: Titanic specialists, of course, but also stamp collectors who like postmarks,” specialist Andrew Aldridge told the BBC.
Two pocket watches are also leading the sale. One is a Zenith Swiss example that once belonged to First Class passenger Ramon Artagaveytia Gomez, who was intending to visit the U.S. before returning to his home in Argentina. Though he had survived another maritime disaster—the fire and sinking of the ship America—he was not nervous about this voyage, writing to a cousin two months before leaving that the arrival of wireless would mean ships could easily signal their distress.
Pocket watch recovered from passenger on Titanic in 1912. Image courtesy Henry Aldridge & Son.
Accounts from the night of April 14 suggest that Artagaveytia jumped off the ship’s deck holding a deck chair. He did not survive and his body was recovered about a week later by Cable Ship Mackay-Bennett. The watch, which still bears damage from its submersion in salt water, was found stuck forever reading the time 4:53 a.m., just two hours and 33 minutes after the boat sunk.
Artagaveytia’s belongings were returned to his family in Uruguay, who chose not to restore the watch but to keep it as an artifact frozen in time. It hits the auction block with an asking price of £60,000-£80,000 ($75,000-$100,000).
The other watch is an 18-karat gold example by Tiffany & Co. that was presented to Captain Rostron in May 1912 by three Titanic survivors. It commemorates his efforts to ensure that over 700 passengers and crew were rescued from the sinking ship.
Henry Aldridge & Co. calls this treasure “the sister piece of J.J. Astor’s pocket watch,” which the auction house memorably sold for a record-breaking $1.5 million earlier this year. It had belonged to the ship’s richest passenger, John Jacob Astor, who died on the Titanic at the age of 47, having put his wife and woman friend onto a lifeboat.
His body was recovered on April 22 and several valuable items were saved, including Astor’s watch, cuff links, diamond ring, and golden pencil, all of which were handed over to his son. The watch was first auctioned in the 1990s and was most recently acquired by a U.S. collector for ten times its high estimate of $150,000.
These precious items and over 300 more will be offered as part of the “Titanic, White Star, and Transport Memorabilia” online sale by Henry Aldridge & Co. on November 16.