A life jacket worn by a passenger who escaped the sinking RMS Titanic sold at auction for £670,000 ($906,000). The flotation device belonged to Laura Mabel Francatelli, a first-class passenger, and is signed by her and other survivors from the same lifeboat.
The jacket was the headline lot in a sale of Titanic memorabilia held by Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes, western England. It went to an unidentified telephone bidder, far exceeding the presale estimate of £250,000–£350,000. A lifeboat seat cushion sold in the same auction for £390,000 ($527,000); that piece was bought by the owners of Titanic museums in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and Branson, Missouri. All reported prices include the auction house’s buyer’s premium.
“These record-breaking prices illustrate the continuing interest in the Titanic story, and the respect for the passengers and crew whose stories are immortalized by these items of memorabilia,” auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said.
Billed in its day as the world’s most luxurious ocean liner and even described as “practically unsinkable,” the Titanic struck an iceberg off Newfoundland during its maiden voyage from England to New York and sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912. About 1,500 of roughly 2,200 passengers and crew perished. The disaster endures in part because the ship carried people from a wide social spectrum, from the poorest to the wealthiest.
Francatelli had been traveling with fashion designer Lucy Duff Gordon and her husband, Cosmo Duff Gordon. All three survived in lifeboat No. 1, which was launched with 12 people despite having room for about 40; the boat’s failure to take on more survivors from the freezing water later sparked controversy.
The record auction price for Titanic-related memorabilia remains £1.56 million, paid in 2024 for a gold pocket watch presented to the captain of the RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued about 700 Titanic survivors.