A gold pocket watch that belonged to a man who died onboard the Titanic when it sank has sold for a record sum.
The watch, which belonged to 67-year-old Isidor Straus, went for £1.78m at auction, the highest amount ever paid for Titanic memorabilia. He was handed the watch – an engraved 18-carat Jules Jurgensen – as a gift on his 43rd birthday in 1888.
The previous record sale of an item related to the Titanic was succeeded last year when a different gold pocket watch, which was given to the captain of a ship that rescued more than 700 passengers from the liner, was sold for £1.56m.
Straus was born into a Jewish family in Otterberg, Bavaria, in 1845 and emigrated to the US with his family in 1854. It was there that Straus made his name, becoming a partner in the New York department store Macy’s. Straus and his wife, Ida, were two of the more than 1,500 passengers who died onboard when the Titanic sank in 1912, and two of the relatively few first-class passengers who died in the tragedy.
When the ship began to sink, the couple were reported to have made their way to the lifeboats where they were offered seats because of their age, but Straus declined to be given one before other men. Ida refused to leave him and they were last seen alive sitting on deckchairs, facing fate by each other’s side.
The couple were depicted in James Cameron’s 1997 epic film Titanic, where they were shown lying on their bed in loving embrace as their cabin filled with water. Straus’s watch was later recovered from the wreckage and returned to the Straus family.
It was one of many Titanic-related items auctioned by Henry Aldridge & Son auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, this weekend. Other items that went under the hammer included a letter written by Ida Straus on Titanic stationery, which went for £100,000; a Titanic passenger list, which was bought for £104,000; and a gold medal awarded to the crew of the RMS Carpathia by rescued survivors, which sold for £86,000.
The total sum of the auction of Titanic-related memorabilia reached £3m.
The auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said: “The world-record price illustrates the enduring interest in the Titanic story. Every man, woman and child passenger or crew had a story to tell and they are told 113 years later through the memorabilia.
“The Strauses were the ultimate love story, Ida refusing to leave her husband of 41 years as the Titanic sank, and this world-record price is testament to the respect that they are held in.”
