A pocket watch recovered from the body of a man who died aboard the Titanic is set to be auctioned later this month and could sell for as much as $66,000, according to the British auction house managing the sale.
The timepiece belonged to 27-year-old Hans Christensen Givard, a Danish passenger who boarded the Titanic with two friends. The group was traveling to the United States in 1912 when the ship struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic. All three men died in the disaster.
Givard’s body was later recovered at sea. His personal belongings, including the pocket watch, were returned to his brother in Denmark and eventually passed down through the family. The watch will go on sale through Henry Aldridge & Son beginning April 26.
Made of silver and brass, the “gilded ladies’ pocket watch” shows minor signs of saltwater damage, but its hands are missing. The auction listing describes the object as a rare survivor of one of history’s most infamous maritime tragedies.
Andrew Aldridge, managing director of the auction house, said the watch is “frozen in time.” It stopped working at the moment the Titanic disappeared beneath the icy waters on April 15, 1912, he told Agence France-Presse.
The estimated sale price ranges from $40,000 to $66,000.
The watch is one of several Titanic-related items currently available through Henry Aldridge & Son, a firm that has long specialized in artifacts from the ill-fated voyage.
Other items include a handwritten letter by Swedish passenger Erik Gustaf Lind and a third-class ticket that belonged to Canadian-born Ernest Portage Tomlin. Both men died in the sinking.
A violin used in the 1997 film Titanic, played by the bandleader in one of the film’s most emotional scenes, is also up for auction.
Pocket watches linked to Titanic passengers have brought in large sums at previous sales. In November, a bidder paid $2 million for one such item – a record-breaking price for Titanic memorabilia, according to the Associated Press.
That sale surpassed a previous record set earlier in the same year, when a gold watch once owned by John Jacob Astor sold for about $1.46 million. Astor, the wealthiest passenger aboard the ship, had an estimated net worth of $87 million at the time of his death in 1912.
Auctioneers say the enduring interest in Titanic artifacts reflects the powerful emotional pull of the story, more than a century after the ship’s tragic end.
