Titanic Straus Watch Sells for Record £1.78 Million

A gold pocket watch recovered from the body of Titanic passenger Isidor Straus sold for a record 1.78 million pounds at an auction in England on Saturday, marking the highest price ever paid for an artifact from the 1912 maritime disaster.

The 18-carat Jules Jurgensen timepiece, engraved and gifted to Straus by his wife Ida on his 43rd birthday in 1888, stopped at 2:20 a.m. when the ship struck an iceberg and began to sink in the North Atlantic. Straus, a 67-year-old co-owner of Macy's department store in New York, and his wife perished together among the more than 1,500 lives lost when the RMS Titanic went down on April 15. The watch remained in the Straus family for over a century before being offered by Henry Aldridge & Son auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge described the item as emblematic of the ship's enduring legacy. "Every man, woman and child passenger or crew had a story to tell, and they are told 113 years later through the memorabilia," he said. The Strauses' account, in particular, has captured public imagination for its portrayal of devotion. Witnesses reported that Isidor, offered a lifeboat seat due to his age, declined it to allow...