Unsung Titanic hero's gold watch could sell for £100k

A gold pocket watch owned by an unsung hero of the Titanic disaster could fetch up to £100,000 at auction, those selling it say.

The item, which goes under the hammer in Penshurst later this month, was awarded to the engineer of a steamship responsible for saving more than 700 of the stricken ocean liner's passengers in April 1912.

John Richardson had been instrumental in the RMS Carpathia rescuing survivors from the Titanic's lifeboats, just hours after it had gone down in the North Atlantic, killing 1,500 people.

Justin Matthews, director of Hansons Auctioneers, described the watch as having given him "goose bumps" when he first held it.

He said: "It is spine-tingling to know the watch's connection to one of the most famous and tragic events of the 20th century."

Matthews added that it was due to the gruelling efforts of Richardson and his below-deck colleagues, who battled intense heat to keep the Carpathia's coal-fired boilers fully stoked, that it reached the scene as quickly as it did.

"They turned it from a transatlantic passenger ship into a high-speed rescue vessel under emergency conditions," he said.

"Their skill, endurance, and judgment directly translated into lives saved."

Scottish-born Richardson, then aged 26, was one of several engineers honoured with an 18-carat timepiece by the Liverpool-based Carpathia Engineers' Presentation Fund at a ceremony months after the incident.

The fund's founders believed the vital role the men played in the rescue had been woefully overlooked.

The watch then stayed in Richardson's family for almost a century before first being offered for sale in 2003.

It also went on public display at a Southampton Maritime Museum exhibition in 1992 to mark the 80th anniversary of the Titanic sinking.