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A life jacket worn by a Titanic survivor sold for more than $900,000 at auction on Saturday, exceeding expectations and highlighting the enduring fascination with the doomed ship.
The flotation device – believed to be one of only a handful of Titanic life jackets still in existence – was used by first-class passenger Laura Mabel Francatelli during the ship’s 1912 sinking and was the only device of its kind offered at auction.
It sold to an anonymous telephone bidder at Henry Aldridge & Son auctioneers in Devizes, England, for £670,000, or about $906,000 including fees.
The final price far exceeded the estimated range of approximately $339,000 to $475,000.
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A Titanic lifeboat is shown carrying a survivor in London on Wednesday, May 16, 2007. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)
Other items sold at the auction included a seat cushion from the Titanic lifeboat, which was valued at approximately $527,000 and was purchased by the owners of the Titanic museums in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and Branson, Missouri.
Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said, “These record-breaking prices reflect the continuing interest in the story of the Titanic and the respect we have for the passengers and crew whose stories are immortalized by these memorabilia.”
Francatelli wore a life jacket when climbing into Lifeboat No. 1 with 11 others after the Titanic – described at the time as “practically unsinkable” – struck an iceberg just before midnight on April 14, 1912, near Newfoundland during its maiden voyage from England to New York.
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A rare Titanic artifact, a survivor’s life jacket, sold to a private bidder for more than $900,000, auctioneers said. (BNPS)
He and seven other survivors from the same lifeboat later signed the item.
Francatelli, who was 22 at the time, was working aboard the Titanic in France while working as a secretary for fashion designer Lady Lucy Duff Gordon and her husband, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon.
He later recalled that he was helped into a lifeboat and was directed to the deck when the lifeboats were lowered. Lifeboat No. 1, which had a capacity of 40, became controversial after failing to pick up additional survivors from the cold Atlantic waters.
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Francatelli wore a life jacket as he boarded Lifeboat No. 1 after the Titanic struck an iceberg shortly before midnight on April 14, 1912. (BNPS)
The cream-colored life jacket, made of segmented canvas filled with cork, has been displayed in museums in the United States and Europe.
Although the price of this item was high, it fell short of the record for Titanic memorabilia. In 2024, a gold pocket watch given to the captain of the RMS Carpathia – the ship that rescued more than 700 survivors – was sold for 1.56 million pounds, or about $2 million at the time.
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Titanic passenger Isidor Strauss and his gold pocket watch are up for auction (Bateman/Getty Images)
Saturday’s auction took place 114 years after the Carpathia arrived in New York with Titanic survivors on board on April 18, 1912.
Kelly McGreal of Fox News Digital and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
