Deck Log Listing Titanic Bodies Sells for EUR100,000 ; INTERNATIONAL

Jun 30, 04:15 PM

Current Headlines: By Kristian Low

A deck log from a ship that searched for bodies after the Titanic sank sold for more than EUR100,000 (pounds 50,000) during a New York auction of memorabilia from the doomed liner.

"It's a journal that documents how many bodies were picked up and where in the Titanic debris field in the Atlantic Ocean," said Gregg Dietrich, Christie's maritime and ocean liner specialist.

The Titanic - the world's largest passenger steamship at the time - struck an iceberg in the Atlantic and sunk on its maiden voyage, killing at least 1,496 people on April 15, 1912.

The 18 lots of Titanic memorabilia - including letters, postcards, telegrams from survivors and photographs of passengers - sold at auction for a total of pounds 96,570.

The auction also included the ship's first-class passenger list, with such prominent New York names as the Astors, Guggenheims and Strauses. That sold for pounds 24,000, topping a pre-sale estimate of pounds 7,500 to pounds 10,000.

An eight-page handwritten description of the sinking fetched pounds 8,400, exceeding the pre-sale estimate of pounds 5,000 to pounds 7,500.

The original account was written by 16-year-old Laura Marie Cribb, of Newark, New Jersey, after surviving the wreck.

The third-class passenger was rescued by the RMS Carpathia, but her father perished. She watched the lights go out on the Titanic, followed by the "most terrible shrieks and groans from the helpless and doomed passengers who were left on the wreck of the great ship".

The deck log from cable ship SS MacKay-Bennett, the second ship on the scene after the Carpathia, was up for auction at a pre-sale estimate of pounds 15,000 to pounds 25,000. The log sold for pounds 51,000. All prices include a 20 per cent buyer's premium.

The rescue ship MacKay-Bennett was the first of four vessels that searched for bodies after the Titanic, which carried more than 2,000 passengers. An embalmer from Nova Scotia was stationed on board the MacKay-Bennett to oversee the operation.

After seven days, 306 bodies were recovered.

Artefacts from another famous shipwrecked luxury liner, the Andrea Doria, were also auctioned. The Italian vessel was heading across the Atlantic towards New York in 1956 when it collided with a Swedish passenger ship, the SS Stockholm, and sank, killing 46 people. The wreck lies on the bottom of the ocean floor south of Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Christie's also sold items such as silverware and posters from the SS Normandy, the French Art Deco ocean liner that capsized and burned in New York Harbour during the Second World War.

Terrible shrieks and groans from the helpless and doomed passengers who were left on the wreck of the great ship

Laura Marie Cribb

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