iblog

A key which is believed to have been able to save the Titanic from sinking has recently fetched £90,000 in an auction. Apparently the key was for a store of binoculars but it was not on the ship when it set sail so the binoculars were never used. Many speculate that if it had been on the ship, the crew would not have had to rely on their naked eyes alone and may have been able to spot the fatal iceberg and dodge it in time.

The small, rusty key, bearing the tag “Crows Nest Telephone Titanic” is believed to have been in the pocket of an officer who was transferred off the vessel days before it left. He had simply forgotten to pass it on and it therefore couldn’t be used. Now, an anonymous telephone bidder has been able to acquire the key in an auction in Wiltshire, for which the bidding was apparently “fierce.” As auctioneer Henry Aldridge says:

“We had several telephone bidders as well as people in the auction room, and the gentleman who was successful was very happy. But I can tell you the man he outbid was not, he was very disappointed.”

The price for which the key was sold is obviously a huge sum of money for anyone to get their head around. However, it is clear why the key is seen as so precious now - the key wasn’t just any old key but the key to the life of the Titanic, the key to the lives of 1,522 who perished on that voyage. It is simply incredible that this small object could have changed the destiny of so many, and is now in the hands of someone so many years after the incident.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Travel, Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.