Titanic auction attracts more attention as 100th anniversary nears

PanARMENIAN.Net - The April 1 auction of more than 5,000 Titanic artifacts a century after the luxury liner's sinking has stirred hundreds of interested calls, with some offering to add to the dazzling trove already plucked from the ocean floor, The Huffington Post reported.

Auctioneer Arlan Ettinger said his New York auction house, Guernsey's Auctioneers & Brokers, has heard from some descendants of the more than 700 survivors, including one offer he describes as morbid: papers found on the floating body of a passenger after the sinking.

The papers will not be included, but something much more poignant will be: a children's bracelet with the name Amy spelled out in diamonds. Only two Amys were listed among 2,228 passengers, of whom more than 1,500 died.

The auction will feature clothing, fine china, gold coins, silverware and "The Big Piece" – a 17-ton section of the Titanic's hull – plucked from the pitch-black depths 2 1/2 miles beneath the North Atlantic. It will be sold in one lot and the winning bid will be announced April 11. It was appraised in 2007 at $189 million.

Ettinger said Guernsey's has had its share of high-profile auctions – treasures from the estates of Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Princess Diana and President John F. Kennedy – but the collection from the world's most famous shipwreck tops them all. The Titanic sank April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg the night before during its maiden passage from Southampton, England, to New York.

An international team led by oceanographer Robert Ballard located the wreckage in 1985, about 400 miles off Newfoundland, Canada. The auction will be the first of Titanic artifacts collected from its final resting place, although items gathered from the ocean surface and from survivors have been sold in the past.

Premier Exhibitions Inc. has been displaying a fraction of the artifacts in traveling shows worldwide, including a permanent exhibit in Las Vegas. RMS Titanic Inc., a division of Premier that has overseen the artifacts for 18 years as the court-recognized salvor, said the public company decided to auction the collection in response to shareholders' wishes.

By order of a federal maritime judge in Virginia who has overseen the case for years, the items cannot be sold individually and they must go to a buyer who agrees to properly maintain the collection and make it available for occasional public viewing. The sale is also subject to court approval.

The Guernsey auction is also offering first-of-its-kind archaeological data and images of the wreck, as well as the only detailed map of the debris field on the ocean floor. It's about 2-by-3 miles.

The intellectual property includes more than 1,000 hours of film footage showing where the artifacts were gathered, 400,000 still images and 3-D footage of the Titanic's bow and stern, said Brian Wainger, a spokesman for Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions. The buyer could also have the opportunity to become the steward of the wreck site itself.