A GOLD pocket watch recovered from Titanic passenger Isidor Straus has sold for £1.78m, setting a new world record for Titanic memorabilia.
The 18-carat engraved Jules Jurgensen watch was found on his body after the disaster and preserved by his family for more than a century.
It was auctioned by Henry Aldridge & Son, where intense bidding showed the enduring interest in the tragedy of April 14, 1912.
“Pocket watches always have a place in people’s hearts, because they are so personal to people,” said auctioneer Andrew Aldridge.
“In the case of the Straus watch, you have a potent mix of factors that obviously resulted in the watch selling for the highest price ever for a piece of Titanic memorabilia.”
While the Titanic’s story is known worldwide, it also remains one of the most important chapters in Ireland’s industrial past.
The ship was designed and constructed at Harland & Wolff in Belfast, which was then the largest shipyard in the world, by around 15,000 Irish builders.
The engineering feat was a point of enormous pride for early 20th-century Belfast, and the vessel’s launch in 1911 drew huge crowds along the slipways in what is now the Titanic Quarter.
“You have places all over the world with a Titanic connection... obviously Ireland was heavily affected, lots of emigrants were going over to the States to start a new life,” Aldridge said.
Visitors from around the world travel to Northern Ireland's Titanic Belfast Museum and the preserved slipways to follow the ship’s journey from its ambitious beginning in Ireland to its tragic end in the North Atlantic.
“If you look at Titanic Belfast, they have a number of iconic objects and pieces of memorabilia being exhibited, pretty much all of which we’ve sold,” he said.
“We’ve sold these items to third-party collectors who are kind enough to let the museum borrow their items for exhibition.”
It was on stationery embossed with the name of the Belfast-built liner that Ida Straus wrote a letter that fetched £100,000.
Isidor Straus, a co-owner of Macy’s department store and a former US congressman, was travelling with his wife Ida when the Titanic struck an iceberg during its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.
The couple became one of the best-remembered human stories of the disaster.
Offered a lifeboat seat due to his age, the 67-year-old Straus reportedly refused, insisting that women and younger men should go first.
Ida, unwilling to leave without him, stepped away from safety and remained by his side.
The pair were later seen seated together on deckchairs as the ship slipped beneath the water at around 02:20, the same moment the watch stopped.
Isidor’s body was later recovered, but Ida’s was never found.
The auction, which totalled £3m, also included a Titanic passenger list sold for £104,000 and a gold medal awarded to the crew of the rescue ship RMS Carpathia, which sold for £86,000.
The £1.78m sale surpasses the previous Titanic memorabilia record set last year, when a gold pocket watch presented to the Carpathia’s captain sold for £1.56m.
Aldridge said the staggering price reflects the lasting public fascination with the stories behind the Belfast-built ship.
“To distil it to its basic essence, a giant ship hits a massive iceberg, and there is a massive loss of life."
"But with the Titanic, every man, woman and child had a story to tell, and we tell and retell those stories 113 years later through items of memorabilia such as the Straus watch,” he said.
“These items of memorabilia give us a connection, a point from A to B that travels across time. It gives people that personal connection to the disaster.”
“The Strauses were the ultimate love story. Their memory endures, and these objects continue to tell the human stories of a tragedy that remains close to many hearts.”
“The joy of the Titanic story for collectors, historians and enthusiasts is there’s always something new to talk about."
“You have two and a quarter thousand versions of that story, and that’s why people are fascinated by that ship.”
See More: Auction, Titanic, Titanic Belfast
