Titanic victims' pocket watch, letter and ticket among items going on sale in U.K.

CBS News

16-04-2025

A pocket watch that once belonged to a passenger on the Titanic will be available to purchase at the end of this month, potentially for as much as $66,000, according to the auction house where it will go on sale. The watch's original owner, 27-year-old Hans Christensen Givard of Denmark, was traveling to the United States with two of his friends when the ship sank, killing all three, said
Henry Aldridge and Son
, the British auctioneers accepting bids on the item starting April 26.
Givard's body was recovered from the North Atlantic Ocean shortly after the Titanic went down, and belongings found with him were returned to his brother in Denmark and later passed on to the brother's descendants. Among them was a "gilded ladies' pocket watch," reads a description on the auction house's website. Made from silver and brass, the watch has only traces of salt water corrosion and its dial is missing both hands, the auctioneers said.
"The watch's movement is frozen in time at the moment the cold North Atlantic waters consumed not only its owner but the most famous ocean liner of all time, Titanic, on April 15, 1912," Andrew Aldridge, of the auction house, told Agence France-Press. Henry Aldridge and Son anticipates the watch's value will land somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 British pounds, which equates to roughly $40,000 to $66,000.
Henry Aldridge and Son continually hosts biddings on items of
Titanic memorabilia
. Other artifacts currently for sale include
a handwritten letter
belonging to the Swedish passenger Erik Gustaf Lind and
a third-class ticket
belonging to the Canadian-born Ernest Portage Tomlin, both of whom died in the sinking. A violin played by the bandleader in the 1997 film "Titanic" is also up for sale.
Pocket watches previously owned by Titanic passengers have sold for huge amounts at Henry Aldridge and Son's auctions before, with a bidder in November claiming one of them
for $2 million
. At the time, Andrew Aldridge said the gold timepiece was the most expensive example of Titanic memorabilia ever sold, the Associated Press reported. The price of that item had broken a record set earlier in the year, when the same auction house sold a different gold watch for about $1.46 million. In that case, the 14-carat object belonged to the wealthiest passenger on the Titanic,
John Jacob Astor
, whose net worth was around $87 million when the disaster happened in 1912, according to the auctioneers.