Wooden cross made from Titanic wreckage goes on auction
A wooden cross made from oak taken from the Titanic and crafted as a “mark of respect to those lost” is up for auction in the U.K. later this month.
The cross was made by Samuel Smith, a carpenter on the ship S.S. Minia, which was one of the vessels that recovered the bodies of Titanic victims in April 1912, the BBC reports.
According to the outlet, crew from the S.S. Minia picked up debris from the Titanic as they retrieved the bodies. Smith made the cross from some of that wreck wood to honor the more than 1,500 passengers and crew who died when the ship struck an iceberg.
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The piece has remained in Smith’s family, but will now go up for auction on Oct. 19 at Henry Aldridge and Son in Devizes, Wiltshire, a world-renowned auction house which specializes in Titanic artifacts. The cross has a pre-sale estimate of $14,755 to $22,132.
Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge told Fox News that the artifact is “incredibly powerful and poignant.”
"The cross made from wreck wood from Titanic is without doubt one of the most powerful and emotive pieces of memorabilia of its type I have ever auctioned,” he said, according to the Belfast Telegraph.
"The provenance is fantastic, we literally know the timeline of where this has been since the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912.
"It was created by Samuel Smith, who was a joiner on the Minia, one of the ships that was given the unenviable task of collecting the bodies of those lost in the disaster and either burying them at sea or returning them to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
"In the course of this the crew picked up flotsam and jetsam, and this cross was made from some of that wreck wood by Mr. Smith as a mark of respect to those lost."
The cross is part of an archive relating to the recovery of Titanic victims. Other items in the collection are photographs, documents and Smith's woodworking tools, as well as a certificate of discharge documenting his marine career. In total, the collection is valued at $49,182.
Aldridge described the archive as "one of the most complete collections of material owned and collected by a Minia crewman.”
The RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean after hitting an iceberg on April 15, 1912, causing the deaths of 1,517 people. It is still remembered as one of the greatest passenger-carrier disasters in history.
Over the years, various artifacts from the infamous ship have been auctioned off or put on display in museums around the world.
In 2017, a sea-stained letter recovered from the body of a Titanic victim was sold at auction for $166,000, and a cracker from the ship sold for $23,000 the same year, according to CBS News.
A violin owned by the Titanic's orchestra leader fetched more than $1.4 million in a 2013 auction, and two menus went for $140,000 in 2012. A cup presented to the captain by Titanic survivor Molly Brown sold for $200,000 in 2015.
The RMS Titanic's ship plan sold for $336,000 through Henry Aldridge and Son auction house in 2011.
