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The Titanic historical treasure trove discovered in a shoe box after death of last living survivor

Last updated at 10:05am on 28th March 2008

 

The moving story of one of the last survivors of the Titanic can be revealed for the first time after touching letters and documents were discovered after her death.

 

For 94 years Lillian Asplund refused to speak about the tragedy that claimed the lives of her father and three brothers.

 

Instead, the spinster kept the final moments of her family locked in her memory and the poignant possessions of her father Carl hidden in a shoebox in her bureau.

 

It was only after her death aged 99 the box was found along with the collection of Titanic-related items that, pieced together, tell the tragic story of the family's demise.

 

Among them were notes Mr Asplund had copied from a flyer promoting the benefits of living in California, an American dream that enticed the family to set sail for a new life.

 

An incredibly rare and water-stained ticket for the luxury liner was also found. Only a handful of Titanic tickets are in existance as most of them sunk with the ship.

 

The paper documents recovered from his body miraculously survived for 12 days after the disaster because Mr Asplund's lifejacket kept his coat's breast pocket out of the water.

 

His pocket watch which stopped at 19 minutes past two - the exact time the liner sank - was also found on him. And a heart-rending note written by his grief-stricken mother in which she wrote of how she hoped to see her son again in heaven formed part of the collection.

 

The stunning archive includes a sad photograph of Lillian, her mother Selma and three-year-old brother Felix, who both survived, at her father's grave in 1912.

 

The collection has now been made available for sale at auction where it is expected to fetch a combined total of £150,000.

 

The sale has excited many Titanic experts as Lillian Asplund was the very last survivor with memories of the disaster. She is only outlived by Brit Millvina Dean, who was a baby at the time.

 

Andrew Aldridge, of auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Sons of Devizes, Wilts, said: "The importance of this archive for any Titanic collector cannot be underestimated.

 

"Lillian Asplund was the last American survivor and the last survivor with actual memories of it. She was a very private person and hardly ever spoke about the disaster.

 

"She never married and the tragedy must have left a huge emotional scar on her.

 

The collection of documents is expected to fetch up to £150,000

 

The never before seen collection of Titanic survivor Lillian Asplund is coming up for auction

 

"Her family obviously knew she had survived the Titanic but had no idea about this box, let alone what was inside it.

 

"The box was in an Edwardian oak bureau in the home Lillian used to live in with Felix and Selma. The shoebox wasn't particularly interesting to look at but opening it up was like lifting the lid on arguably some of the most historical artefacts relating to the Titanic.

 

"The vast majority of the documents have never been seen or published before.

 

"When you piece them together they tell the story of how this family had hoped to start a new life in America, possibly California, until they boarded Titanic. After that there are these emotional letters and photographs showing what was left of this family in grief."

 

The Asplund family lived in Alsema in southern Sweden until they decided to emigrate to Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1912.

 

Carl Asplund, a 40-year-old labourer, bought seven third class tickets for the Titanic's maiden voyage from Southampton to New York on April 10, 1912.

 

With him were wife Selma, then aged 38, and five children Filip, 13, Clarence, nine, Carl Edgar, five, Lillian, five, and Felix, three.

 

When the ship hit an iceberg and started to sink on the night of April 14, the Asplunds made a decision that the family should die together along with the 1,500 who perished.

 

But, according to an account Selma Asplund later gave, at the last moment Felix and Lillian were thrown into lifeboat 15 by an unknown person. Mr Asplund then pushed his wife forward to go with them.

 

She was haunted by the memory of the faces of her husband and three sons peering over the rail moments before the ship sank. Her husband's drowned and frozen body was recovered from the Atlantic 12 days later but there was no sign of his three sons.

 

Found in the pockets of his brown overcoat were his gold watch, two small keys for a safety box on board which stored the family's life savings, and his gold wedding ring.

 

Also recovered were two pocket books, one of which contained his notes on their new life in California. It is thought he had copied out a flyer designed to entice people to California to show his wife.

 

Part of it read: "California wants people like you, now is your time to come here. We have green grass and wild flowers at this time of year and all the facilities you can have.

 

"An ideal home we can offer you we think. Perhaps you don't believe what we are saying about our climate and city. Come and see it with your own eyes."

 

Other papers on him included a letter dated February 28, 1912, telling Mr Asplund he had as job waiting for him.

 

His possessions were handed to Mrs Asplund who also kept a cold and heartless letter from White Star Line dated May 11, 1912.

 

It told her they were giving her late husband's effects back as they were of "small value". Mr Aldridge said: "This letter states that the items were of low value which is ironic considering just how much they are worth now."

 

Mrs Asplund stored the moving letter written by her mother-in-law, Kristina Samuelsson, 16 months after the tragedy, in the box.

 

In it she states how much her eyes hurt from where she has been in mourning.

 

She wrote: "My nerves are so weak and my eyes are so poor because I have been crying so much but I hope that my grieving days soon will have an end and I will join the final rest where God has promised to wipe out the tears from all the faces."

 

Mrs Asplund died aged 91 on April 15 1964 - 52 years to the day of the disaster. After her death Lillian Asplund put her mother's wedding ring in the box alongside that of her father's gold band.

 

Felix Asplund died in 1983 aged 73 and Lillian passed away in 2006. The auction takes place on Saturday, April 19.

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thread revived on April 15, irony huh.

 

Let me just say, bless all who perished.

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Experts Blame Titanic Sinking on Rivets

By CARLEY PETESCH,AP

Posted: 2008-04-18 11:09:11

Filed Under: World News

NEW YORK (April 18) - The tragic sinking of the Titanic nearly a century ago can be blamed on low-grade rivets that the ship's builders used on some parts of the ill-fated liner, two experts on metals conclude in a new book.

 

The company, Harland and Wolff of Belfast, Northern Ireland, needed to build the ship quickly and at reasonable cost, which may have compromised quality, said co-author Timothy Foecke. That the shipyard was building two other vessels at the same time added to the difficulty of getting the millions of rivets needed, he added.

 

"Under the pressure to get these ships up, they ramped up the riveters, found materials from additional suppliers, and some was not of quality," said Foecke, a metallurgist at the U.S. government's National Institute of Standards and Technology who has been studying the Titanic for a decade.

 

More than 1,500 people died when the Titanic, advertised as an "unsinkable" luxury liner, struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912 and went down in the North Atlantic less than three hours later.

 

"The company knowingly purchased weaker rivets, but I think they did it not knowing they would be purchasing something substandard enough that when they hit an iceberg their ship would sink," said co-author Jennifer Hooper McCarty, who started researching the Titanic's rivets while working on her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1999.

 

The company disputes the idea that inferior rivets were at fault. The theory has been around for years, but McCarty and Foecke's book, "What Really Sank the Titanic," published last month, outlines their extensive research into the Harland and Wolff archives and surviving rivets from the Titanic.

 

McCarty spent two years in Britain studying the company's archives and works on the training and working conditions of shipyard workers. She and Foecke also studied engineering textbooks from the 1890s and early 1900s to learn more about shipbuilding practices and materials.

 

"I had the opportunity to study the metallurgy of several rivets," McCarty said. "It was a process of taking thousands of images of the inside of these rivets, finding out what the structure was like, doing chemical testing and computer modeling.

 

"Seeing the kind of levels we saw in different areas, in different parts of the ship led us to believe they would have been ordered from different people," she said, adding this may have led to the weaker rivets.

 

The two metallurgists tested 48 rivets from the ship and found that slag concentrations were at 9 percent, when they should have been 2 to 3 percent. The slag is a byproduct of the smelting process.

 

"You need the slag but you need just a little to take up the load that's applied so the iron doesn't stretch," Foecke said. "The iron becomes weak the more slag there is because the brittleness of the slag takes over and it breaks easily."

 

Foecke said the main question was not whether the Titanic would sink after hitting the iceberg, but how fast the ship went down.

 

He believes the answer is provided by the weak rivets. His analysis showed the builders used stronger steel rivets where they expected the greatest stress and weaker iron rivets for the stern and the bow, where they thought there would be less pressure, he said. But it was the ship's bow that struck the iceberg.

 

"Typically you want a four bar for rivets," Foecke said, using the measurement for the strongest rivets. "Some of the orders were for three bar."

 

Harland and Wolff spokesman Joris Minne disputed the findings. "We always say there was nothing wrong with the Titanic when it left here," he said.

 

When the iceberg hit the Titanic, it scraped alongside the ship. Foecke said this affected a number of seams in the bow and the weak rivets let go, putting more pressure on the strong rivets.

 

"Six compartments flooded. If the rivets were on average better quality, five compartments may have flooded and the ship would have stayed afloat longer and more people would have been saved," Foecke said. "If four compartments flooded, the ship may have limped to Halifax."

 

The company does not have an archivist, but it refers scientific questions on the Titanic to retired Harland and Wolff naval engineer David Livingstone, who also has researched the ship's sinking.

 

He said he largely agrees with the authors' findings on the metallic composition of the rivets, but added their conclusions that the rivets were to blame for the sinking are "misleading and incorrect" because they do not consider the ship's overall design and the historical context.

 

"You can't just look at the material and say it was substandard," Livingstone said. "Of course material from 100 years ago would be inferior to material today."

 

He said he has found no document to support the argument that Harland and Wolff knowingly used substandard material. He pointed out that the Olympic, a ship the company built at the same time using the same materials, had a long life with no troubles. The third vessel turned out in the early 1900s was attacked and sunk in World War I.

 

Livingstone said he is not sure why iron rivets were used in the bow and the stern but believes it may have been because a crane-mounted hydraulic rivet machine could not reach those points. He said the iron rivets were wider to compensate for the difference in strength.

 

Contrary to Foecke's theory, Livingstone said, the Titanic did not go down fast compared to other ships that have sunk.

 

He said the Titanic did not capsize - as do most sinking ships - but maintained an even keel until the last moment, going down after about 2 1/2 hours when the weight of the water it took on became too much.

 

William Garzke, chairman of the forensics panel of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers based in New Jersey, said wrought iron was commonly used at that time, but steel was the newer, stronger choice.

 

Garzke, who also has studied the Titanic sinking, said the two scientists made a good point about the variability of the rivets, but "the problem is not the metallurgy of the rivets, it was the design of the riveted joints."

 

He said that the company used only two rivets at the site of impact, when three would have provided more strength and durability.

I'm not certain I agree with any of this. Certainly, the rivets used do not compare to the rivets we use today, but I believe they were the best available at the time. The Olympic was built at the same time and survived several collisions.

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TITANIC Fact For The Day:

Most people don't know that back in 1912, Hellmann's mayonnaise

was manufactured in England. In fact, the Titanic was carrying 12,000

jars of the condiment scheduled for delivery in Vera Cruz, Mexico,

which was to be the next port of call for the great ship after its stop

in New York.

 

This would have been the largest single shipment of mayonnaise

ever delivered to Mexico. But as we know, the great ship did not make

it to New York. The ship hit an iceberg and sank, and the cargo was

forever lost.

 

The people of Mexico, who were crazy about mayonnaise, and were eagerly

awaiting its delivery, were disconsolate at the loss. Their anguish was

so great, that they declared a National Day of Mourning, which they

still observe to this day.

 

The National Day of Mourning occurs each year on May 5th and is

known, of course, as Sinko De Mayo.

 

OK.....you got me.....its not a real fact........ :whistling:

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Titanic life jacket to go on sale in New York

By Sinead Carew Reuters - Wednesday, June 18 06:59 pm

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An unused life jacket from the doomed Titanic ship will go under the hammer later this month in New York, Christie's auction house said on Wednesday.

 

The cork-filled life preserver -- still largely intact, but stained and torn in parts -- was thought to have been found by farmer John James Dunbar on the Halifax shoreline after the passenger ship sank off Newfoundland.

 

The liner sank during its maiden voyage from the British port of Southampton to New York in April, 1912 when it hit an iceberg, causing some 1,500 people to die.

 

Christie's, which estimated that the life preserver would sell for 30,620 pounds to 40,828 pounds, sold another Titanic life jacket last year in London for 60,727 pounds.

 

Maritime specialist Gregg Dietrich said there was still huge public interest in Titanic memorabilia as the sinking of the ship, which had been billed as unsinkable, caused such a loss of life and was one of the first world-wide news events.

 

"The Titanic is really one of those bookmarks in time," he said during a press viewing of the item before the auction.

 

Dietrich said that after the London sale last year, Christie's was inundated with offers of what people thought were Titanic artifacts, but about 99 percent proved to be reproductions.

 

After getting a call in February from the Nova Scotia MacQuarrie family, who had kept the jacket safe for generations, Dietrich went to check its authenticity and found it had the correct dimensions and looked damaged by water.

 

He said the jacket -- believed to be one of six remaining -- appeared to have been unused because the shoulder straps were still intact whereas Titanic passengers tended to have had their life preservers cut off to avoid skin chaffing.

 

Dietrich said that the cork filling the jackets was so heavy that many of the survivors and victims of Titanic were found to have broken their jaws on the preservers when they hit the water after jumping from the ship.

 

The preserver will be the main item in Christie's Ocean Liner auction that also includes a second-class passenger list carried off by 12-year-old survivor Bertha Watt as well as her high school essay describing the night the Titanic went down.

 

Another item going on sale is a Marconi Gram sent by another survivor, Helen, to her family, estimated to fetch $7,000 to $10,000.

 

(Editing by Michelle Nichols and Sandra Maler)

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Cool stuff! I saw a Titanic life preserver once at the Titanic Historical Society's museum in Massachussets. It belonged to Mary Astor, wife of John Astor.

 

Its really tough to document a real artifact. Within days of the ship going down, replicas and fakes were already showing up. One rule of thumb is, if something you think may be real has the name "Titanic" on it, it is a fake. Since all of the items aboard the ship were routinely used on other ships, nothing had the ships name actually on it except for the lifeboats. The lifeboats were also lost to history as the name "Titanic" was sanded off the boats shortly after their return and they were placed on other ships.

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Last Titanic Survivor Sells Ship RelicsBy JILL LAWLESS, AP

posted: 8 HOURS 20 MINUTES AGOcomments: 161filed under: World NewsPrintShareText SizeAAALONDON (Oct. 16) - Millvina Dean was only 2 months old when she was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat from the doomed Titanic. Now 96, the last survivor of the tragic sinking is selling mementos of the disaster to help pay her nursing home fees.

Rescued from the bitterly cold Atlantic on that April 1912 night, Dean, her 2-year-old brother and her mother were taken to New York with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Before returning home to England, they were given a small wicker suitcase of donated clothing, a gift from New Yorkers to help them rebuild their lives.

 

post-1043-1224255608.jpg

Millvina Dean, the last living Titanic survivor, is seen here at age 90.

 

Now, Dean is selling the suitcase and other Titanic mementos to help pay her nursing home fees. They are expected to go for $5,200 at an auction of Titanic memorabilia Saturday in Devizes in western England.

Among the items are rare prints of the Titanic and letters from the Titanic Relief Fund offering her mother one pound, seven shillings and sixpence a week in compensation.

But the key item in the sale is the suitcase, said auctioneer Andrew Aldridge. "They would have carried their little world in this suitcase," he said Thursday.

Dean has lived at Woodlands Ridge, a private nursing home in the southern city of Southampton — Titanic's home port — since she broke her hip two years ago.

"I am not able to live in my home anymore," Dean was quoted as telling the Southern Daily Echo newspaper. "I am selling it all now because I have to pay these nursing home fees and am selling anything that I think might fetch some money."

A spokeswoman for Woodlands Ridge said Dean was too tired Thursday to speak to The Associated Press.

She said rooms at the nursing home cost between $1,000 and $1,550 a week, depending on the level of care the resident needs, but declined to discuss Dean's situation, saying it was a private matter.

Although Britain has a free health care system, private providers offer more comprehensive services for a fee. In the case of nursing homes, state-run facilities are available and cost much less than private ones. But they are more spartan and offer fewer amenities, such as shared rooms and no private TVs.

Local authorities often pay a portion of the costs of private nursing home care based on an individual's assets; anyone with more than $39,000 in assets has to pay their own fees.

In 1912, baby Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean and her family were steerage passengers emigrating to Kansas City, Mo., aboard the Titanic.

Four days out of port, on the night of April 14, 1912, it hit an iceberg and sank. Billed as "practically unsinkable" by the publicity magazines of the period, the Titanic did not have enough lifeboats for all 2,200 passengers and crew.

Dean, her mother Georgetta and brother Bertram Jr. were among 706 people — mostly women and children — who were rescued by the steamship Carpathia and survived. Her father, Bertram Dean, was among more than 1,500 who died.

Dean did not know she had been aboard the Titanic until she was 8 years old, when her mother, who was about to remarry, told her about her father's death.

She has no memories of the sinking and said she preferred it that way.

"I wouldn't want to remember, really," she told The Associated Press in a 1997 interview.

Dean said she had seen the 1958 film, "A Night to Remember," with other survivors, but found it so upsetting that she declined to watch any other movies about the disaster, including the 1997 blockbuster "Titanic," starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet.

Dean began to take part in Titanic-related activities in the 1980s, and was active well into her 90s. She visited Belfast, Northern Ireland, to see where the ship was built, attended Titanic conventions around the world — where she was mobbed by autograph-seekers — and participated in radio and television documentaries about the sinking.

The last American survivor of the disaster, Lillian Asplund, died in 2006 at the age of 99. Another British survivor, Barbara Joyce West Dainton, died last November at 96.

Aldridge said the "massive interest" in Titanic memorabilia shows no signs of abating. Last year, a collection of items belonging to Asplund sold for more than $175,000.

"It's the people, the human angle," Aldridge said. "You had over 2,200 men, women and children on that ship, from John Jacob Astor, the richest person in the world at the time, to a poor Scandinavian family emigrating to the States to start a new life. There were 2,200 stories."

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Another Titanic anniversary. The ship sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912 with great loss of life. RIP Titanic passengers and crew!

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Just read an article this morning where a cruise line is already taking deposits for a cruise in 2012 that will retrace Titanic's exact route. Its a one way trip for $3000.

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Just read an article this morning where a cruise line is already taking deposits for a cruise in 2012 that will retrace Titanic's exact route. Its a one way trip for $3000.

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