Rare Titanic artifacts that survived the ship’s sinking are up for auction
An unusual walking stick that belonged to a Titanic survivor and a first-class passenger’s meal receipt from the doomed liner are up for auction.
An unusual walking stick that belonged to a Titanic survivor and a first-class passenger’s meal receipt from the doomed liner are up for auction later this month.
“We’re delighted to have some of the most treasured objects to have come from the Titanic in this auction,” Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey’s auction house, told Fox News.
These include a walking cane that was used by socialite Ella White when she escaped the sinking ship. White, who features in Walter Lord’s best-selling book on the disaster, “A Night to Remember,” used the walking stick, with its built-in electric light, to signal rescue ships from Titanic’s lifeboat 8.
“This very walking stick was used to save lives and was there on the Titanic,” Ettinger told Fox News.
The unusual light-up walking stick that was used by Titanic survivor Ella White. (Fox News)
A star witness in the court hearings that followed the disaster, White was a fascinating figure. “Although married to a man, she had a life partner, another woman, who she traveled very openly with and spent the rest of her life with,” Ettinger told Fox News. “So she was very much her own woman and quite a prominent figure making this cane, this walking stick, all the more important.”
The walking stick has a pre-sale estimate of $300,000 to $500,000.
A Titanic receipt from one of the ship’s survivors will also be in the auction. “This was a receipt given to a first class passenger who chose on some occasion, not to eat in a first class dining room, so, to make up the difference, they gave him this receipt,” Ettinger said.
File photo - The Titanic leaving Southampton April 10, 1912. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)
The receipt has a pre-sale estimate of $6,000 to $8,000.
Ettinger told Fox News that pottery shards recovered from the Titanic’s wreck site will also be auctioned. A host of other nautical artifacts will also be auctioned off, including crockery and a poster from the White Star Line, which owned Titanic.
MOLLY BROWN'S TITANIC CUP SOLD AT AUCTION FOR $200,000
The items will be sold at Guernsey’s nautical auction “Centuries at Sea” at the International Yacht Restoration School in Newport, R.I. on July 19th and 20th.
File photo - Titanic lifeboats on their way to the Carpathia following the sinking of the Titanic (REUTERS/George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress/Handout)
More than 100 years after the Titanic’s sinking, the disaster continues to be a source of fascination.
In 2017, a sea-stained letter recovered from the body of a Titanic victim was sold at auction for $166,000. In 2016, the sextant used by the captain of the rescue ship Carpathia sold for just under $97,000.
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A cup presented to the captain by Titanic survivor Molly Brown to the Carpathia captain sold for $200,000 in 2015.
Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
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