A gold pocket watch once owned by an elderly couple who drowned on the RMS Titanic has sold for an astonishing 1.78 million pounds — the equivalent of $2.3 million — setting a new record for memorabilia salvaged following the sinking of the ill-fated luxury liner.
Auctioneers said it surpassed the previous record of 1.56 million pounds set last year for a gold watch presented to the captain of the ship that rescued more than 700 survivors, according to the Daily Mail.
The London-based tabloid reported:
The 18-carat Jules Jurgensen engraved watch was owned by first-class passenger Isidor Straus, whose tragic story with his wife, Ida, became one of the defining legends of the 1912 catastrophe, which killed 1,500 people.
The couple were portrayed in James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster film Titanic as the couple cradling each other as the Titanic goes down.
Responders recovered the watch from the body of Isidor Straus along with other items and returned them to his family. His wife’s body was never found in the icy waters of the north Atlantic.
Straus was a partner in R.H. Macy’s. He received the watch the same year he became co-owner of the New York department store, in 1898 for his 43rd birthday. He eventually purchased the entire store with his brother.
A Bavarian immigrant, Straus also served a brief term in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1894-1895.
During the night of the tragedy, the wealthy couple made it to the Titanic’s lifeboats, the numbers of which were inadequate and could not accommodate the entire number of passengers on the ship. Straus reportedly refused a seat, insisting he would not leave until all the younger men had departed.
His wife declined to leave her husband. The two were last seen sitting together on deck chairs when the massive ocean liner went down in what would eventually be reported as a tragic love story.
The couple was reportedly among the few first-class passengers to perish on a ship that was promoted as “unsinkable.” A letter written by Ida Straus on Titanic stationary also sold for 100,000 pounds, the equivalent of $130,000.
Straus’s watch was put up for bidding by Henry Aldridge & Son Auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, England.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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