A pocket watch belonging to a postal clerk aboard the RMS Titanic has sold for £98,000 – 110 years on. Oscar Scott Woody’s watch is frozen at the time he went into the cold North Atlantic when the ship sank on 14 April, 1912. It was recovered from the ocean and returned to his wife Leila the following month. The watch was sold at Henry Aldridge & Sons in Devizes on Saturday along with other memorabilia from the doomed ship. A first-class menu featuring ‘plover on toast’ sold for £50,000 and a list of first-class passengers went for £41,000.
After he died on 15th April 1912, his father received a telegram from his mother’s cousin, who had spoken with survivors in New York, seeing news of Andrews. The telegram was read aloud by Andrews Sr. to the staff of their home in Comber: “Interview titanic’s officers. All unanimous that Andrews heroic unto death, thinking only safety others. Extend heartfelt sympathy to all.” The newspaper accounts of the disaster labeled Andrews a hero. Mary Sloan, a stewardess on the ship, whom Andrews forced to enter a lifeboat, later wrote in a letter: “Mr. Andrews met his fate like a true hero, realizing the great danger, and gave up his life to save the women and children of the Titanic. They will find it hard to replace him.”
[Due to summer break, I did not post much. Catching up on some news that hopefully will interest everyone-editor]
This Man Was The Only Passenger Of Known African Ancestry To Die On The Titanic In 1912 (Face2FaceAfrica.com, 8 Aug 2018) When the blockbuster movie, “Titanic” was released in 1997, telling the story of the over 1,000 people who died in the world’s biggest shipping disaster in 1912, there was no portrayal of any African or black person aboard the ship. But later research by the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry would reveal that there were a distinguished Haitian man and his white wife on board the ship. Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche, who would later become the only man of African descent to die in the Titanic ship disaster, was from a privileged class in Haiti and had received education from private tutors.Born on May 26, 1889, in Cap Haitien, Haiti, Laroche was the son of a white French army captain and a Haitian woman who was a descendant of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first ruler of independent Haiti.
News link:https://face2faceafrica.com/article/this-man-was-the-only-passenger-of-known-african-ancestry-who-died-on-the-titanic-in-1912
Titanic Pocket Watch With Hebrew Numerals Could Fetch £15,000 At Auction (Jewish News,15 Aug 2018) A silver pocket watch with Hebrew numerals recovered from a Russian-Jewish victim of the Titanic disaster is expected to fetch more than $20,000 (£15,728) when it goes under the hammer this month. Sinai Kantor, 34, from Vitebsk, Russia, was hoping to start a new life in America when his life was tragically cut short after the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic, on April 12, 1912. The Swiss-made, open-face silver-on-brass watch, with its original movement and a diameter of three inches, includes numerals that are Hebrew letters. An embossed design on the back shows Moses holding the Ten Commandments. The watch’s movement is rusted as a result of immersion in salt water, the hands are nearly all deteriorated and the dial is stained. Kantor’s pocket watch will go under the hammer at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, on August 25.
News link:https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/titanic-pocket-watch-with-hebrew-numerals-could-fetch-15000-at-auction/
What Sank The Titanic? Well a new documentary Collision Course: Titanic opens the debate again that something other than just rivets and an iceberg were the cause of the sinking. Being shown on Reelz starting yesterday (19 Aug), the circulars claim it will claim the rivets did not fail. Whether it rehashes already old theories or has something new to offer remains to be seen.
Source: Baffled Titanic Expert Says Luxury Ship Should Not Have Sunk After Iceberg Impact (Radar,17 Aug 2018) https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/08/17/baffled-titanic-expert-says-luxury-ship-should-not-have-sunk-after-iceberg-impact/23504370/