A gold pocket watch found on the body of the wealthiest man aboard the Titanic has been sold for a staggering amount: a whopping 1.4 million euros.
The watch was purchased by a private collector in the USA from Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes, Wiltshire, for the highest price ever paid for Titanic relics. The watch was expected to fetch somewhere between £100,000 and £150,000. The gold item is among the articles being offered at the auction house Henry Aldridge & Son in Wiltshire, England, including the suitcase containing the violin played by the band leader as the ship went down, as well as a pocketbook recording Titanic’s planned voyages.
The watch belonged to 47-year-old John Jacob Astor, who went down with the ship on April 15, 1912, after helping his wife into a lifeboat. Instead of trying his luck on another lifeboat, the always tastefully dressed businessman, a prominent member of the wealthy Astor family, was last seen smoking a cigarette and chatting with another passenger.
His body was found in the Atlantic seven days after the ship sank. When recovered from the water, the 14-karat gold watch, engraved with the initials JJA, was also found with him. The watch was among the personal items found with Astor’s body after the Titanic sank, according to the auction house. He also had a gold pocket watch, a diamond ring, cash, and a wallet.
After Astor’s body was found, these items were sent to his son, Vincent Astor, who fully restored the watch to working condition. In 1935, Vincent gave the watch as a christening gift to his little son, William Dobbin IV, John Jacob Astor’s executive secretary, according to the auction house.
Aldridge told CNN that the Dobbin family kept the watch until the late 1990s, when it was put up for auction. Astor was considered one of the richest men in the world at the time of the Titanic sinking, with a net worth of around $87 million — the equivalent of several billion dollars today.
