Wallace Hartley, a second-class passenger on the Titanic, went down with the ship, but the violin he was playing on the night the liner stuck an iceberg survived and was sold at auction over the weekend for a surprisingly titanic sum, $1.5 million. The instrument was recovered in 2006 along with Hartley’s travel bag, which also was auctioned by Henry Aldridge & Son in London. The bag contained the violin and sheet music....
The unsinkable H.M.S. Titanic struck an iceberg, sunk in just over two hours and lay undisturbed in the North Atlantic seabed for seven decades. Now more than 5,500 artifacts and the ship itself is up for auction in an unprecedented sale. The famous shipwreck, which reaches its centennial this year, yielded fine china, silverware, clothing, diamond jewelry and other personal items, decorative items from the boat, and even pieces of the ship, according to RMS Titanic Inc., a division of Premier Exhibitions....
