Watches made from the metal of the hull of the doomed Titanic will soon be on sale. A West End dealer in designer watches told HT that these unique watches could easily cost up to £75,000, much more than the price of any average diamond-studded ones.
“Anything to do with the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic triggers emotions,” the dealer said, adding, “The value of these watches will only increase over the years. They are a collector’s item.”
The metal was salvaged by divers from the wreck of the liner — which lies 12,500 feet under the North Atlantic where it sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912. Fifteen hundred people died in what is one of history’s worst accidents.
The casing of the timepieces, according to a Sunday Mail report, will made of metal blended with modern shipbuilding steel. Coal, which was to be burned in the Titanic’s furnaces and later recovered from the seabed, has been mixed with ceramics to create black dials for the watches.
Geneva-based jeweler and watch-maker Romain Jerome is making the watches, which will be marketed under the name “Titanic-DNA” in a limited run of 2,012 —the year marking the 100th anniversary of the disaster.
The hands of the watch is inspired by the liner’s anchor, and the small seconds dial is designed to look like the pressure gauges on the ship’s boiler. Titanic enthusiasts, however, feel that it’s all in bad taste. Said a reader from Wales, “This is the last resting place for over a thousand souls, no one should make money out of their grave.” Another from Oxford said, “Metal doesn’t have DNA and who cares where the steel is from? At this and any other moment you could be breathing the same air molecules that have been breathed by any figure throughout history — so what. Nice watch for people with more money than taste.”
{{/usCountry}}The hands of the watch is inspired by the liner’s anchor, and the small seconds dial is designed to look like the pressure gauges on the ship’s boiler. Titanic enthusiasts, however, feel that it’s all in bad taste. Said a reader from Wales, “This is the last resting place for over a thousand souls, no one should make money out of their grave.” Another from Oxford said, “Metal doesn’t have DNA and who cares where the steel is from? At this and any other moment you could be breathing the same air molecules that have been breathed by any figure throughout history — so what. Nice watch for people with more money than taste.”
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