A gold-trimmed pocket watch stopped ticking at 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, as the Titanic was sinking in the North Atlantic. Its wealthy owner was seen standing on the deck, arm in arm with his wife, as the ship went down.
On Saturday, the watch sold at an auction in England for $2.3 million, a record for a piece of Titanic memorabilia, according to Henry Aldridge & Son, the auction house that organized the sale. A pocket watch sold by the same house in November 2024 for $1.9 million had been given to the captain of the ship that responded to the Titanic’s distress call.
The 18-karat gold watch that sold on Saturday belonged to Isidor Straus, a co-owner of the Macy’s department store franchise who traveled first class on the Titanic with his wife, Ida Straus. It is engraved with his initials and the date of his 43rd birthday, according to the auction house’s website.
The body of Mr. Straus, who was 67 when the ship sank, was found at sea roughly two weeks later. Ms. Straus’s remains have never been recovered.
A letter that Ms. Straus wrote on Titanic stationery was also sold, for $131,000, at Saturday’s auction in the English country of Wiltshire, southwest of London, the auction house said.
“What a ship!” Ms. Straus wrote in the letter to someone she addressed as Mrs. Burbridge. “So huge and so magnificently appointed. Our rooms are furnished in the best of taste and most luxurious, and they really are rooms.”
Henry Aldridge & Son has recently sold a number of valuable items of Titanic memorabilia. Months before it sold a pocket watch for $1.9 million, it sold another for $1.46 million. The auction house has also sold a violin played on the ship for $1.3 million and a letter from a passenger for $120,000.
The Strauses’ tragic love story has been widely documented in exhibitions and movies about the Titanic. Survivors said that Mr. Straus refused to board a lifeboat while other passengers were left behind and that Ms. Straus stayed with him. The couple was seen in each other’s arms on the ship’s deck as it plunged into the icy waters.
The Strauses were the inspiration for a fictionalized scene in James Cameron’s 1997 film “Titanic” showing an older couple embracing in bed as their cabin floods with water.
In 2023, the husband of one of Mr. Straus’s descendants was involved in a deadly accident near the wreck of the Titanic, in which an experimental submersible carrying a pilot and four passengers imploded during a dive.
The pilot, Stockton Rush, was married to Wendy Rush, the Macy’s magnate’s great-great-granddaughter.
Jin Yu Young reports on South Korea, the Asia Pacific region and global breaking news from Seoul.
The post Titanic Passenger’s Pocket Watch Sells for $2.3 Million appeared first on New York Times.
