A gold-trimmed pocket watch stopped ticking at 2:20am on April 15, 1912, as the Titanic was sinking in the North Atlantic. Its wealthy owner was seen standing on the deck, arm in arm with his wife, as the ship went down.

On Saturday, the watch sold at an auction in England for $2.3 million, a record for a piece of Titanic memorabilia, according to Henry Aldridge & Son, the auction house that organised the sale. A pocket watch sold by the same house in November 2024 for $1.9 million had been given to the captain of the ship that responded to the Titanic’s distress call.

The 18-karat gold watch that sold on Saturday belonged to Isidor Straus, a co-owner of the Macy’s department store franchise who travelled first class on the Titanic with his wife, Ida Straus. It is engraved with his initials and the date of his 43rd birthday, according to the auction house’s website.

The body of Isidor, who was 67 when the ship sank, was found at sea roughly two weeks later. Ida's remains have never been recovered.

A letter that Ida wrote on Titanic stationery was also sold, for $131,000, at Saturday’s auction in the English country of Wiltshire, southwest of London, the auction house said.

“What a ship!” Ida wrote in the letter to someone she addressed as Mrs. Burbridge. “So huge and so magnificently appointed. Our rooms are furnished in the best of taste and most luxurious, and they really are rooms.”

The Strauses' tragic love story has been widely documented in exhibitions and movies about the Titanic. Survivors said that Isidor refused to board a lifeboat while other passengers were left behind and that Ida stayed with him. The couple was seen in each other’s arms on the ship’s deck as it plunged into the icy waters.

The Strauses were the inspiration for a fictionalised scene in James Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic showing an older couple embracing in bed as their cabin floods with water.

New York Times News Service