museum

From The Guardian

They are some of the most evocative historic artefacts that fate ever consigned to the bottom of the sea. Now, coal from the Titanic, a piece of rope from the Mary Rose and musket flints from the shipwreck that inspired William Wordsworth to write one of his greatest works are to be sold at a very rare auction.

The artefacts are among the 8,000 objects salvaged from 150 wrecks that will go under the hammer for the first time next month.

The entire collection of the Shipwreck Treasure Museum in Charlestown, near St Austell, Cornwall, is up for sale after the tourist attraction, which is owned by the family of Tim Smit, co-founder of the Eden Project, was put on the market for £1.95m earlier this year but failed to attract a buyer.

“I can’t imagine there’s a more important collection of maritime archeology worldwide,” said David Lay of Lay’s Auctioneers, which is selling the lots. “There are many wonderful, rare discoveries.”

Founded in 1976 by Richard Larn, a former navy diver and historic shipwreck expert, the museum’s extraordinary collection is being broken up into 1,254 lots and includes rare items from wrecks that are now legally protected historic sites or designated war graves.

This includes 46g of coal, recovered in 1994, which was onboard the Titanic to fuel the steamship’s doomed voyage to New York in 1912. While a gold pocket watch recovered from the body of the Titanic’s wealthiest passenger, John Jacob Astor, sold for a record-breaking £1.2m earlier this year, the lumps of coal have been valued at £400 to £600.

Lay is hoping the auction will attract fans of the Titanic from around the world. Another collector’s item in the sale is a piece of rope recovered from Henry VIII’s Tudor flagship, the Mary Rose.

Estimated to fetch £5,000 to £10,000, it was given to Larn after he reportedly helped the Mary Rose Trust to dislodge the ship from the depths of the Solent using underwater explosives.