It might sound like a morbid thing to spend $57,500 on a rusted-out pocket watch owned by a drowning victim of one of the Titanic’s ill-fated passengers, but you will likely find it less gruesome when you learn that the collector ready to spend that kind of money for such an item has done it before – and would certainly do it again if he could.
No, John Miottel is not macabre. But he is the owner of the Miottel Museum, a privately held gallery boasting one of the world’s largest collections of luxury ocean liner memorabilia. And this watch is not the only one found in the wreckage created on April 15, 1912 by metal hitting ice that he has bought for inclusion in his museum’s collection.
This Swiss made, open-face, silver-plated brass pocket watch once belonged to Sinai Kantor, a Jewish Russian immigrant on his way to New York with his wife, Miriam, where the university graduates from Vitebsk, Belarus had intended to study dentistry and medicine. But after the Titanic historically collided with an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean, Sinai got his wife to one of the lifeboats according to the “women and children first” loading protocol, but perished and is now buried at Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens, New York. The pocket watch was sold by one of the unlucky couple’s direct descendants along with copies of papers illustrating how difficult it was for Miriam to recover her husband’s effects, inducing extensive legal effort until five weeks after the disaster took place.
The watch is relatively unremarkable outside of the fact that it survived the water damage in any way and that it is strongly religiously themed – Kantor was Jewish – with Hebrew numerals on the dial and an engraving on the back of the case depicting Moses holding the Ten Commandments. Its manually wound movement and case are obviously rusted thanks to the unintended saltwater bath, the hands have just about crumbled away, and the dial is severely stained.
Nonetheless, new owner Miottel is not unhappy with his purchase. “It will take one of the primary spots in our collection,” he said. Miottel’s museum already owns other timepieces owned by more Titanic victims, including the gold Waltham pocket watch previously owned by John Jacob Astor IV, founder of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Astor seemed to have a tick for good timepieces: he had previously purchased an incredible clock in 1893, which he prominently placed in his hotel (and which you can read about in The Fantastic Clock In The Lobby Of New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Is Pure History). Two of Miottel’s other prized possessions include an Ingersoll-Midgett once owned by Oscar Woody, the U.S. postal clerk on board, and the pocket watch possessed by Harold Thomas Cottam, the rescue ship’s wireless operator and the first person to receive the Titanic’s distress call. “I’ll be looking for the fifth (timepiece),” Miottel promised Heritage Auctions, who enabled the sale of Kantor’s waterlogged, ticking treasure.
Elizabeth Doerr is the editor-in-chief of Quill & Pad, an online publication that keeps a watch on time.
