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The highest price ever paid for an item of Titanic memorabilia has been broken for the second time this year. A gold pocket watch, given to Captain Sir Arthur Rostron by grateful survivors of the disaster, fetched £1.56m ($1.97m) at auction. The Tiffany & Co timepiece, which is 18 carat, was awarded to Rostron, who commanded the vessel RMS Carpathia, after he and his crew rescued over 700 passengers from the stricken liner. The sale was conducted by Wiltshire auction house Henry Aldridge and Son.
The inscription reads: “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 was given to Rostron by Madeleine Astor, widow of the millionaire industrialist, during a luncheon at the Astor family mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York. The auction house has described the sale as demonstrating the “enduring fascination” with the disaster.
The Carpathia, en route to Europe from New York, was sailing nearby when the Titanic hit an iceberg and began to sink. Wireless operator Jack Phillips famously signaled “CQD Titanic”, which morphed into the more widely used “SOS”. Rostron immediately set his ship’s course for the sinking liner and was able to take aboard some 705 survivors. The record for the most valuable piece of Titanic memorabilia was first broken in April this year when a pocket watch owned by John Jacob Astor was sold for £1.175m.
The previous record holder was the violin played by Wallace Hartley as the ship went down, which fetched £1.1m in 2013. Andrew Aldridge of Henry Aldridge and Son said that the fact that the record had been broken twice this year demonstrated the “ever-decreasing supply and an ever-increasing demand” for items linked to the doomed liner. Though the sale is set to become the most talked-about of the year, the private collector in the US who made the winning bid has not been named
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