Titanic survivor's heart-shaped pendant to be auctioned in Cork

A brooch and pendant which Florence Agnes Angle cherished will come under the hammer in Carrigtwohill this month

A c1900 pink tourmaline and half-pearl brooch pendant.

The last she saw of her husband was from the lifeboat. He was waving to her from the upper decks of the Titanic. Florence Agnes Angle, who died in 1969 aged 93, never remarried. A brooch and pendant which the Titanic survivor and nurse cherished will come under the hammer at the next Lynes and Lynes auction in Co Cork.

Florence eventually settled in Leamington Spa in her native Warwickshire. She rarely talked about that tragic night. But when in 1961 the Coventry Evening Telegraph reported the death of Finnish-born Helga Hirvonen in New York — describing her as the last survivor of the Titanic — the elderly but feisty Mrs Angle went to the newspaper office to set the record straight.

She too had survived the 1912 disaster — and was certain that other Titanic survivors were still living too. In an interview at that time, she recounted how she had been asleep when the Titanic hit the iceberg. Her husband woke her and told her to get dressed. Instead, she went back to sleep. Woken up again by the commotion outside the cabin, the couple went to the upper decks together. There she was separated from him and placed in a lifeboat.

A c1900 pink tourmaline and half-pearl brooch pendant.

The story of the Titanic is as potent as it ever was. Memorabilia and artefacts continue to command huge auction prices. 

A gold pocket watch recovered from the body of Macy’s co-owner Isidor Strauss made £1.78 million (€2.08 million) at Aldridges in Wiltshire last year. A letter written by his wife Ida on Titanic stationery and posted in Cobh (Queenstown) sold for £100,000 (€116,880).

The heart-shaped pendant.

Denis Lynes has put more modest estimates of €5,000-€10,000 on a sandstone heart-shaped pendant with a gold-plated chain, emblematic of all the heartbreak and tragedy of the Titanic disaster, and on a c.1900 gold-pink tourmaline and half-pearl brooch. Eat your hearts out, Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Willed to an Irishwoman by Mrs Angle, the jewellery will come up as lots 349 and 350 at his sale in Carrigtwohill on August 29.

A newspaper cutting reporting on the death in 1969 of Florence Agnes Angle.