A commemorative gold watch that was gifted to the captain of a ship who rescued 700 passengers and crew members of the Titanic has sold for £1.56 million ($1.97 million), making it the most expensive item of Titanic memorabilia.
In 1912, Arthur Rostron was captaining the steamship RMS Carpathia from New York to Rijeka, a port in modern-day Croatia, when he received distress calls from the Titanic that said: “Come at once. We have struck a berg.” Rostron duly ordered his ship to race towards the sinking Titanic, a journey of three and a half hours made treacherous by ice floes.
How the Titanic Survivors Were Picked up by the Carpathia, Photographs taken by Mr J W Barker, a passenger on Carpathia. Photo by Universal Images Group/Getty Images.
Though more than 1500 people died, Rostron’s decisive actions (including pushing the Carpathia to its maximum speed and readying the ship to care for survivors) helped locate and save the passengers on board 20 lifeboats. He was hailed as a hero in both American and British media, a point sharpened by the inaction of the Californian, another nearby ship which witnessed the Titanic’s distress flares, but sailed on.
A year after the disaster, the widows of three wealthy businessmen who had died on board gave Rostron an 18-carat Tiffany & Co. pocket watch. One side of the watch bore the captain’s initials, “A.H.R.”; the other had the inscription: “Presented to Captain Rostron with the heartfelt gratitude and appreciation of three survivors of the Titanic April 15th 1912 Mrs John B Thayer, Mrs John Jacob Astor and Mrs George D Widener.”
The watch remained in the Rostron family for some 70 years before being sold. It changed hands again a decade ago and this most recent sale took place between two private collectors in the U.S. It was aided by Henry Aldridge and Son, a U.K.-based auction house that specializes in memorabilia related to Titanic and White Star Line, the British shipping company that owned the Titanic.
Postcard depicting the Titanic, 1907. Photo: Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.
Earlier this the year, the auction house facilitated the sale of a gold watch worn by the Titanic’s richest passenger, John Jacob Astor, a real estate developer whose family wealth stemmed from fur trading in the 18th and 19th centuries. A private collector in the U.S. paid $1.5 million for the 14-carat gold Waltham pocket watch engraved with Astor’s initials. At the time, it was the most expensive item of Titanic memorabilia.
“The fact the world record price for Titanic memorabilia has been broken twice this year demonstrates the ever-decreasing supply and an ever-increasing demand for memorabilia related to the ship,” Andrew Aldridge said in a statement.
The watch sale happened alongside the auction house’s “Titanic, White Star, and Transport Memorabilia” on November 16. It offered more than 300 items including a postcard sent home by a passenger who died on board and a first-class passenger’s pocket watch that was frozen in time from when its owner jumped into the north Atlantic.