Even as the Titanic slipped beneath the icy North Atlantic, one story of devotion survived the disaster — and now it has made history at auction.
A gold pocket watch that once ticked on the wrist of first-class passenger Isidor Straus, who drowned alongside his wife Ida, has sold for a record-breaking £1.78 million ($2.32 million). It is the highest price ever paid for Titanic memorabilia, auctioneers said.
The 18-carat Jules Jurgensen watch, engraved and given to Straus for his 43rd birthday in 1888 — the same year he became a partner in New York’s iconic department store Macy’s — was recovered from his body after the ship sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912.
The couple, played by Lew Palter and Elsa Raven in James Cameron’s 1997 film “Titanic,” refused to separate in their final moments and were last seen by witnesses arm in arm on the deck of the sinking ship.
Straus had been offered a seat on a lifeboat due to his age, but he insisted that other men go first. Ida Straus refused to leave his side. They were among the very few first-class passengers to perish in the disaster that claimed 1,500 lives.
The watch remained in the Straus family for more than a century before being sold at Henry Aldridge & Son Auctioneers in the British town of Devizes.
Other Titanic treasures auctioned off on Saturday include a letter written by Ida Straus aboard the Titanic, a passenger list and a gold medal awarded to the RMS Carpathia’s crew by survivors, with the auction bringing in a total of £3 million ($3.92 million) on Saturday.
“Every man, woman and child had a story,” auctioneer Andrew Aldridge told NBC News on Sunday. “And we’re retelling those stories 113 years later.”
The Strauses, in particular, “have been dramatized in every Titanic movie that’s been made,” he added, calling theirs an “incredible love story.”
“Obviously you’re looking at what the object is,” he said. “But one of the most crucial elements to their value is who they belong to.”
The previous record was set last year when another gold pocket watch, presented to the captain of a boat that rescued more than 700 passengers from the liner, sold for £1.56 million.
Isidor Straus, born in 1845 into a Jewish family in Otterberg, Bavaria, emigrated to the United States in 1854. The couple was traveling home from a trip when they boarded the doomed Titanic in Southampton, heading for New York.
