Life jacket worn by a passenger who survived the Titanic auctioned off for over $900,000 : NPR
FILE – The Titanic left Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912, for its maiden voyage.
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LONDON — A life jacket worn by a passenger on the RMS Titanic as she escaped the sinking steamship on a lifeboat was sold at auction Saturday for 670,000 pounds ($906,000).
The flotation device was worn by Laura Mabel Francatelli, a first-class passenger on the doomed liner, and is signed by her and other survivors from the same lifeboat.
FILE – A Titanic life jacket belonging to a survivor is displayed, London, Wednesday May 16, 2007.
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It was the star among items at a Titanic memorabilia sale by auctioneers Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes, west England, and sold to an unidentified telephone bidder for well above the pre-sale estimate of between pounds 250,000 and pounds 350,000.
A seat cushion from one of the Titanic’s lifeboats sold at the same auction for 390,000 pounds ($527,000) to the owners of two Titanic museums in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and Branson, Missouri.
Prices include an auction fee called a buyer’s premium.
“These record prices illustrate the continuing interest in the story of the Titanic and the respect for the passengers and crew whose stories are immortalized in these memorabilia,” said auctioneer Andrew Aldridge.
Considered the world’s most luxurious liner and described as “virtually unsinkable”, the Titanic struck an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland during its maiden voyage from England to New York. It sank within hours on April 15, 1912. About 1,500 of the 2,200 passengers and crew died.
The Titanic still sparks worldwide fascination, in part because of the diversity of passengers aboard the ship, from the poor to the plutocrats.
Francatelli was traveling with her employer, fashion designer Lucy Duff Gordon, and Lucy’s husband, Cosmo Duff Gordon. All three survived in the ship’s No. 1 lifeboat, which had been launched with 12 people when it could accommodate 40. Its failure to recover survivors from the frigid waters became a source of controversy.
The record auction price for a Titanic memorabilia was 1.56 million pounds (nearly $2 million at the time) paid in 2024 for a gold pocket watch given to the captain of the RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued 700 Titanic survivors.
