A violin believed to have been played on the Titanic as it sank was auctioned for more than $1.6 million Saturday, a record price for memorabilia from the doomed ocean liner and a fantastic figure that one collector said may never be beaten.
The sea-corroded instrument, now unplayable, is thought to have belonged to bandmaster Wallace Hartley, who was among the disaster’s more than 1,500 victims.
The story of Hartley’s band, which stoically continued playing on the ship’s deck until the disaster’s final hour, is a memorable part of James Cameron’s film “Titanic,” where Hartley and his colleagues are seen playing “Nearer, My God, To Thee” as panicked passengers around them scream and perish in the icy waters.
The incredible story, along with its heart-rending portrayal in one of the world’s most popular films, likely played a role in pushing the instrument’s price to 900,000 pounds, or past 1 million pounds when the buyer’s premium and tax are taken into account.
“It’s a world record for a Titanic artifact,” said Peter Boyd-Smith, a Titanic memorabilia collector at the auction, hosted by Henry Aldridge and Son in the western England town of Devizes.
“The only other items that are probably worth that kind of money are the items salvaged from RMS Titanic if they are ever put up for sale and those are in the exhibitions that go around America and Europe,” he said. “It may never get beaten.”
The violin, with Hartley’s name on it, is believed to have been found at sea in a leather case strapped to the musician’s body. It was more than 10 days after the Titanic sank in the icy North Atlantic in April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.
It was given back to Hartley’s fiancée Maria Robinson in England, and, after she died in 1939, it was donated to her local Salvation Army band and later passed on, eventually to the current owner, whose identity has not been disclosed.
“Mr. Hartley and the band were very brave people … standing by their posts to the bitter end,” auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said ahead of the sale.
Henry Aldridge and Son said the violin has been subject to years of numerous scientific and forensic tests to authenticate the instrument since its rediscovery in 2006. It said earlier this year that the violin was Hartley’s “beyond reasonable doubt.”
However some people still doubt whether the violin is genuine, believing it could not have survived being submerged in sea water.
The violin, of German make, was a gift from Hartley’s fiancee Maria Robinson, and features an engraved silver plate with the words: “For WALLACE on the occasion of our ENGAGEMENT from MARIA.”
Andrew Aldridge said the buyer, who bid over the phone, wished to remain anonymous.
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