LONDON: A tiny forgotten key that could have saved the Titanic has fetched £90,000 ($210,000) at auction.
Marked with the tag Crows Nest Telephone Titanic, the key was to a cabinet containing the ship's binoculars, but it was not aboard when it left Southampton.
Instead the key was in the pocket of an officer, transferred off the ship days before its maiden voyage, who forgot to hand it to his replacement as he left. As a result the lookouts had to rely on the naked eye as the ship navigated a treacherous ice field.
The Titanic hit a giant iceberg in the North Atlantic late at night on April 14, 1912, four days after setting sail from Southampton.
The auctioneer, Henry Aldridge, said bidding for the key at Saturday's sale in Devizes, Wiltshire, was fierce. The purchase was made by an anonymous telephone bidder on behalf of Tesiro, a diamond house, based in Antwerp. Other items in the sale included a rare launch ticket from Belfast, where the ship was built, which fetched £32,000 and a postcard sent home by a passenger on board, which sold for £17,000.
The ship's second officer, David Blair, held the key during the short journey from Belfast, where the Titanic was built, to the south coast.
One of the lookouts on the Titanic told the inquiry into the sinking that with the binoculars, the Titanic might have been able to dodge the iceberg.
On the difference the binoculars might have made, Fred Fleet said: "Well, enough to get out of the way."
