Made for Tiffany & Co. by Touchon & Co., this 18K yellow gold pocket watch features a custom engraving on the inner caseback and an enameled monogram AHR (Arthur Henry Rostron) on the exterior hunter caseback
The Tiffany & Co. stamp in and of itself, universally commands more money when it comes to timepieces. When you consider the provenance of this watch being gifted to the ship captain who saved over 700 lives when the Titanic sank — it’s not surprising someone paid nearly $1.97 million for this piece of history.
The Carpathia was sailing from New York to the Mediterranean Sea when a radio operator heard a distress call from the Titanic in the early hours of April 15, 1912, and woke Rostron in his cabin. He turned his boat around and headed at full steam toward the doomed vessel, navigating through icebergs to get there.
By the time the Carpathia arrived, the Titanic had sunk and 1,500 people perished. But the crew located 20 lifeboats rescued more than 700 passengers and took them back to New York.
Amongst those who survived, were the widows of three of the most high-profile businessmen lost in the sinking, John Jacob Astor, George Dunton Widener, and John B. Thayer. They commissioned the pocket watch and had this engraved on the primary caseback “Presented to Captain Rostron with the heartfelt gratitude and appreciation of three survivors of the Titanic April 15th 1912 Mrs John B. Thayer, Mrs John Jacob Astor and Mrs George D. Widener.”
They presented the pocket watch to Rostron “with heartfelt gratitude and appreciation” during a lunch on May 31st at the Astor mansion at 840 Fifth Avenue in New York on May 31, 1912, exactly one year after Titanic’s launch, and was later featured in the New York Times on June 2, 1912.
It’s worth noting, that Rostron was also awarded the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal by President William Howard Taft and was later knighted by King George V.
John Jacob Astor’s pocket watch, which was on his body when it was recovered seven days after the ship sank, had previously set the record for the highest price paid for a Titanic keepsake, fetching nearly $1.5 million (1.17 million pounds) from the same auction house in April.
Auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Son, who sold the watch to a private collector in the United States on Saturday for 1.56 million British pounds ($1.968 US dollars), said it’s the most paid-for piece of Titanic memorabilia (price includes taxes and fees paid by the buyer).
Learn more at Henry Aldrige.
