It’s a tarnished old watch, corroded into silence by the same salty waters that swallowed the Titanic. But while it can’t tell time, it does convey a sad, century-old love story.
The silver, three-inch timepiece — auctioned for $57,500 on Saturday — was owned in life by Sinai Kantor. He was 34 when he and his bride, Miriam, 24, took a doomed voyage from Russia aboard the Titanic in April, 1912.
Sinai, who’d planned to become a doctor upon settling in The Bronx, drowned with the silver, Swiss-made watch in the pocket of his green suit.
Miriam, who planned to study dentistry, survived.
Sinai’s watch features Hebrew numbering on its dial, and on its back, an embossed design of Moses holding the Ten Commandments.
If he had pulled it from his pocket when the Titanic jolted against at an iceberg on April 15, some 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, it would have read 11:40 p.m.
He may have glanced at it while on deck, watching as Miriam was ushered “women and children first” into Lifeboat 12.
The Titanic would stay afloat only another two hours, until 2:20 a.m.
Along with his watch, Kantor also had a little telescope in his pocket, and in those two hours he may well have watched his bride’s bobbing lifeboat as the Titanic slipped deeper and deeper into the water.
Sinai’s body was recovered eight days later by a British cable repair ship, the CS Mackay-Bennett. He was embalmed en route to New York, clothed only in his underwear, records show.
Miriam buried him in Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens, then fought an extensive legal battle to recover his effects — his green suit and overcoat, a notebook, a pocket telescope and a corkscrew.
And his pocket watch, which remained in family hands as Miriam relocated to Massachusetts. While she remarried, it’s been said that up until her death she paid to have a spray of fresh flowers placed on his grave every April 15th.
On Saturday, the watch was purchased through Heritage Auctions by John Miottel, a California museum owner who has three other timepieces from the Titanic disaster — including that of Col. John Jacob Astor IV, the wealthiest passenger to perish in the disaster.
