A Rare Titanic Original for Sale

While James Cameron’s film “Titanic” revived interest in the historic tragedy, the 1997 movie supported an extensive market for forgeries of material connected to the doomed ship.“The reality is that 99% of the things associated with the Titanic are replicas and reproductions,” the specialist and head of sale for today’s Ocean Liner auction at Christie’s, Gregg Dietrich, said. “Someone recently approached us with a bunch of Titanic items that turned out to be from a museum gift shop.”The extremely rare nature of genuine Titanic objects keeps prices remarkably high. A life vest, which Christie’s estimates could sell for between $60,000 and $80,000, is one of 10 Titanic items to hit the block in today’s auction, which includes 250 lots including posters, replicas, and items related to many other ships.This is the fifth Christie’s sale of models, posters, and interior design elements from the golden age of the transatlantic liner, and it contains one of the house’s strongest offerings of material related to the Titanic to date.To be sure, the auction will attract aficionados of niche pursuits such as collecting ship models, many of which can sell for $5,000 or more. But the color lithographs used to advertise the great ocean liners of the 20th century are a significant part of the sale as well. Some have sales estimates under $1,000 each, and present opportunities for a wide audience to purchase maritime collectibles.The centerpiece of today’s auction surfaced in February, when Mr. Dietrich received a telephone call from a man in Nova Scotia claiming he had a genuine life vest from the deck of the Titanic. “I thought to myself: Yeah, sure it’s genuine. James Cameron had at least 1,000 replicas of that life vest created,” Mr. Dietrich said.But after scrutinizing some photographs, Mr. Dietrich wanted a closer look. Christie’s had sold a Titanic life vest — only one of five known to exist — last year, and the vest in the photographs looked to be a close match. A trip to Canada to meet with the MacQuarrie family, heirs of the man who found the life vest in 1912, confirmed for Mr. Dietrich that he had a rare Titanic original on his hands.A hearty sailor named John James Dunbar participated in the extensive search-and-rescue efforts aboard both the S.S. MacKay-Bennett and the S.S. Minia when they steamed out of Halifax harbor in the search for wreckage and bodies after the 1912 disaster.Mr. Dietrich suspects Dunbar pulled the life vest out of the water when one of the rescue ships came upon a debris field. He’s almost certain the vest was never used by a passenger: It has the wear and tear of floating in seawater for a good period of time, but if it had sustained someone, the rescuers would have cut the shoulder straps to remove the body.During an exhibition last week at its Rockefeller Center showroom, Christie’s had a model try on the vest, which is filled with substantial layers of cork paneling that weigh seven pounds. A fascinating historical note is that many frozen bodies pulled from the water during the rescue efforts had dislocated or broken jaws. When a passenger jumped off the ship and hit the water, the heavy vest would often slam into his face.Among the most interesting of the Titanic lots are the facing slips found stuffed in the pockets of the jacket of the ship’s postal clerk, Oscar Woody. Facing slips allowed the clerks to organize bundles of postage meant for certain destinations. The three lots at today’s auction, marked Cleveland, Michigan, and New York, carry estimates of between $10,000 and $15,000 each.Mr. Dietrich said that historians agree that Woody, who was celebrating his 44th birthday with colleagues the night the Titanic struck the iceberg, stuffed as many facing slips as possible in his pockets with the hope that, if his body was found, rescuers would have a way of knowing which mail bags went down with the ship.The Titanic lots aside, today’s auction is filled with furniture, fixtures, and posters that recall the Art Deco brilliance of 1930s luxury ocean voyages. Ships such as the S.S. Normandie are well represented with detailed models. A 1935 travel agents’ model of the Normandie sports deck railings, cargo cranes, and wind baffles, and could sell for between $8,000 and $12,000, according to the auction house.

A Rare Titanic Original for Sale

A Rare Titanic Original for Sale

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