Titanic crewmember’s weathered skeleton key sells for $131K at auction
Global News
The weathered skeleton key with a brass plate inscribed "PANTRYMAN" belonged to first-class saloon steward Alfred Arnold Deeble and was found on his body in the Titanic tragedy.
A key used aboard the Titanic that was recovered in the aftermath of the ship’s sinking has sold at auction for US$131,250, after being passed through four generations of a crewmember’s family.
The weathered skeleton key with a brass plate inscribed with “PANTRYMAN” belonged to first-class saloon steward Alfred Arnold Deeble, and was found on his body.
Boston-based RR Auction sold the lot through online bidding that concluded this past weekend.
On April 14, 1912, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in the cold Atlantic about 700 nautical miles from Nova Scotia, killing 1,497 of the 2,209 passengers and crew on board.
Deeble’s body was recovered by Halifax-based cable ship, the MacKay-Bennett, one of 337 bodies plucked from the Atlantic after the tragedy.
He was buried at Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax, and part of the auction lot includes a 2011 photo of his great-niece, Linda Jo McNulty Davis, visiting his gravesite.
McNulty Davis’s grandmother, Lily Deeble, was instrumental in bringing the key home to her family.
Not only did she lose her brother Alfred in the sinking, but her fiancé John Herbert Strugnell — another Titanic steward — also perished.
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