Unseen Titanic archive set to fetch £100k at Wiltshire auction

A never-before-seen collection of items belonging to a first class Titanic passenger is set to fetch more than £100,000 at auction.

The archive, owned by 61-year-old Frederick Sutton who drowned in the 1912 disaster, is going under the hammer in Devizes, Wiltshire, on 22 November.

Among the items is the only first class passenger list to have survived being submerged in the Atlantic, and a note from the White Star Line informing relatives they would have to pay for a first class train ticket to return their loved ones’ bodies.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge, of Henry Aldridge & Son, said the archive was “without doubt one of the most complete collections of its type” they had ever handled.

Mr Sutton was born in Suffolk and settled with his family in New Jersey, becoming wealthy from a property business.

He had travelled to England in March 1912 for health reasons and was returning to the US on the Titanic.

He died when it sank but at first his fate was not immediately known.

Mr Sutton’s body was buried at sea, with his effects placed in a white camp bag bearing the number 46 and taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the MacKay Bennett recovery ship.

The collection has remained in the family since 1912 and has never been publicly seen before. The second part will be offered for sale next year.

Mr Aldridge said: “To discover a first class passenger list that was not only onboard the Titanic but went into the water and actually survived is truly remarkable.”

“The second element of the collection that takes it to another level is the inclusion of the ‘Important Note’ from the White Star Line,” he continued.

The note was sent to families who were waiting for their loved ones to be returned on the McKay Bennett, and stated that grieving loved ones must pay for a first class ticket to secure their return.

“This is callous in the extreme but goes to illustrate how different the world was in 1912,” said Mr Aldridge.