Last U.S. Titanic Survivor's Memorabilia for Sale
A boxful of items from the Titanic was kept secret by the last U.S. survivor.
LONDON, April 2, 2008— -- They are artifacts from a tragic tale that nearly remained an eternal secret. When Lillian Asplund, the last American survivor from the sinking of the Titanic, died in 2006, her family was unaware of the treasures she had kept from that fateful night.
Lillian Asplund, who was 99 when she died, rarely spoke of the disaster that took her father Carl, and her three brothers, including a twin, to their watery graves that freezing cold night of April 14, 1912. The then 5-year-old Lillian, her 3-year-old brother Felix and their mother, Selma Asplund, were pushed into a life boat, and Lillian's last memory of the sinking ship was seeing her father and her brothers peering over the deck as their life boat pulled away while she clung to her mother's skirts for warmth.
After her death, relatives found a shoe box filled with a historical treasure trove from the Titanic in Lillian's dresser drawer. The family approached the auction house Henry Aldridge and Sons of Devizes, England, to help them with the items, and later this month the contents will be sold at a highly anticipated auction.
Andrew Aldridge, auctioneer and Titanic expert, told ABC News that this particular collection was valuable for several reasons. "One, Lillian was the last surviving American from the Titanic old enough at the time to remember the disaster. Only one survivor now remains, a British woman named Millvina Dean of Southampton, England, but she was only two months old at the time." Aldridge added that the items, including one of four remaining Titanic tickets and Liliian's immigrant "forwarding orders," are "indeed truly valuable." The items on auction are expected to bring up to $300,000.
"This shows the family had free passage to travel from New York to Worcester, Mass., where they had previously set up home. For these to have survived is miraculous." And perhaps the most poignant piece from the collection is the beautiful pocket watch owned by Carl Asplund which stopped precisely at 19 minutes past two, one minute before the liner sank. Aldridge says the assumption is that this is the moment when Carl Asplund hit the water.
