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Titanic violin gets mega price

October 19, 2013

A violin that became part of Titanic lore has fetched a record sum at auction. The instrument was apparently played by the bandmaster Wallace Hartley to calm passengers as the Titanic sank.

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Titanic violin for sale. Titanic band leader Wallace Hartley's Violin, who many say played as the ship sank, on display it Henry Aldridge and Son Auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, ahead of its sale on Saturday when it is expected to fetch a six-figure sum. Picture date: Friday October 18, 2013. Photo credit should read: Tim Ireland/PA Wire URN:17949790
Image: picture alliance/empics

Within 10 minutes of the auction's starting, the violin sold for 1.05 million pounds ($1.7 million, 1.24 million euros), including premiums to the house - a record price after a fierce contest between two telephone bidders through the Titanic specialist house Henry Aldridge and Son. Bidding had started at just 50 pounds for the violin.

"We're absolutely overjoyed," Christine Aldridge, a spokeswoman for the auction house, told the news agency AFP. "It was sold to a UK collector who was bidding by telephone. The whole sale only took about 10 minutes."

Wallace Hartley's band played the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee" to try to calm passengers while they climbed into lifeboats as the Titanic sank beneath the icy waves in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg. Hartley and his seven fellow band members died after choosing to play on. In all, the tragedy claimed 1,500 lives.

The German-made violin bore an inscription from Hartley's fiancee, Maria Robinson: "For Wallace on the occasion of our engagement from Maria." It went on sale with its leather luggage case, initialed W.H.H.

After the ship sank, a search team reportedly discovered the violin still strapped to its master. It reportedly reappeared in 2006 in an attic in the English county of Yorkshire, though heated debate ensued over its authenticity before experts cited years of tests in giving the go-ahead for the violin to go to auction. The previous known auction record related to the mighty ship hit 220,000 pounds in 2011 for a plan of the doomed vessel.

mkg/rc (AFP, dpa, AP)

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FILE - In this April 10, 1912 file photo, the liner Titanic leaves Southampton, England on her maiden voyage to New York City. Five days into her journey, the ship struck an iceberg and sank, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,500 people. The first interviews of survivors, and the first impressions of people across the world, of the ill-fated Costa Concordia cruise liner that ran aground and tipped over in Italy, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, are yielding predictable comparisons to the Titanic tragedy. (AP Photo, File)

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