A gold pocket watch belonging to John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest passenger aboard the Titanic, was sold at auction for £900,000, six times the estimated asking price. When taxes and fees are taken into account, the total cost incurred by the buyer for the watch equals £1.175m, beating the previous record price of £1.1m paid for a Titanic artefact – a violin – in 2013. Together the watch and violin have fetched the highest amount ever paid for items from the doomed liner.
The watch has remarkable past, having been restored and worn by Astor’s son, Vincent. Astor tragically went down with the vessel after placing his pregnant wife, Madeleine, in a lifeboat and smoking a final cigarette himself. The brown leather violin bag also sold at the auction for £290,000 and was authenticated as belonging to Wallace Hartley, the musician who led the orchestra that calmed passengers as the ship went down.
The Titanic disaster, which claimed more than 1,500 lives, remains infamous in maritime history, inspiring a range of books, films, songs, and plays. Despite the water damage to the violin case recovered from Hartley’s body, and the contentious nature of collecting items from victims’ bodies, the Titanic community has shown tremendous generosity in enabling such artefacts to go on display.
Managing Director at Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes, Andrew Aldridge, praised the “over 2,200 subplots and chapters” the shipwreck offers, recounting how “each one of those people had an individual tale to tell.” According to Aldridge, the violin is the “rarest and most iconic piece” of Titanic memorabilia, adding that “you could argue that Titanic is the most famous ship that’s ever sailed.
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