LONDON — 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 star lot in a sale of Titanic memorabilia by Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes, western England, and went to an unidentified telephone bidder well above the presale estimate of £250,000–£350,000. A seat cushion from one of the Titanic lifeboats sold at the same auction for £390,000 ($527,000) to the owners of Titanic museums in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and Branson, Missouri. 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 as the world’s most luxurious ocean liner and described at the time 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. Some 1,500 of the roughly 2,200 passengers and crew died. The disaster continues to fascinate in part because the ship carried people across a wide social spectrum, from the very poor to the very wealthy.
Francatelli had been traveling with fashion designer Lucy Duff Gordon and Lucy’s 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 generated controversy.
The record auction price for Titanic-related memorabilia remains £1.56 million (nearly $2 million at the time), paid in 2024 for a gold pocket watch presented to the captain of the RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued about 700 Titanic survivors.