Watch given to Titanic hero sells for £1.56m

A golden pouch ticker fixed to the British vessel skipper who rescued much than 700 passengers from the Titanic has sold astatine auction for a record-breaking £1.56m ($1.97m).

The 18-carat Tiffany & Co timepiece was fixed to Sir Arthur Rostron, past skipper of rider vessel RMS Carpathia, by survivors helium rescued.

Auctioneer Henry Aldridge and Son said it was the highest magnitude ever paid for Titanic memorabilia, and that it was bought by a backstage collector successful the US.

The merchantability demonstrates the "enduring fascination" with ill-fated the water liner, it added.

Sir Arthur changed people of the Carpathia, which was connected its mode from New York for Europe, aft the ship's wireless relation picked up the distress telephone "we've struck ice, travel astatine once".

It acceptable disconnected astatine afloat velocity and reached the Titanic 2 hours aft it had sank successful the North Atlantic connected 15 April 1912.

The ticker was fixed to Sir Arthur by the widow of the richest antheral connected the Titanic, John Jacob Astor, and 2 different widows of affluent businessmen mislaid erstwhile the vas struck an an iceberg and broke isolated - taking the lives of much than 1,500 passengers and crew.

It carries the inscription "presented to Captain Rostron with the heartfelt gratitude and appreciation of 3 survivors of the Titanic April 15th 1912 Mrs John B Thayer, Mrs John Jacob Astor and Mrs George D Widener”.

Sir Arthur received the acquisition from Mr Astor's woman astatine a luncheon astatine the family's mansion connected Fifth Avenue successful New York City, according to the auction house.

"It was presented principally successful gratitude for Rostron’s bravery successful redeeming those lives, due to the fact that without Mr Rostron, those 700 radical wouldn’t person made it," auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said.

The erstwhile Titanic memorabilia grounds was acceptable successful April erstwhile a golden pouch watch, recovered from the assemblage of Mr Astor, sold for £1.175m astatine the aforesaid Wiltshire-based house.

Prior to that, the violin that was played arsenic the vessel sank held the grounds for the highest magnitude paid for a Titanic artefact for 11 years aft being sold for £1.1m successful 2013.

Mr Aldridge said the information the grounds had been breached doubly this twelvemonth demonstrated the "ever-decreasing proviso and an ever-increasing demand" for memorabilia related to the ship.