Lump of coal sells for £1,500 in Charlestown shipwreck museum auction

A small lump of coal recovered from the Titanic wreck is one of hundreds of pieces of shipwreck memorabilia that went under the hammer last week - with that item in particular selling for £1,500.

Some of the lots sold for much more with model ships going for thousands of pounds after the collection from Charlestown Shipwreck Museum, near St Austell, went up for auction with the building itself still for sale. Auctioneer David Lay said he had never seen a sale like it with thousands of bids coming in from all over the world.

Just days before the auction, expected to be of around 8,000 pieces, a deal was struck with the Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust (MAST), to buy 500 of the most sensitive objects from Britain's protected wreck sites. Unfortunately, they won't stay in Cornwall but will be protected and preserved for future generations.

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The auction took place over two days on November 6 and 7. The collection of artefacts represented a "massive undertaking" for the Penzance-based auctioneers. Sorting, cataloguing, and photographing the many thousands of objects into almost 1,300 lots took several months of work, it said.

A spokesperson for Lay's said: "Although controversial locally, the sale of the museum was a pragmatic decision by Tim Smit, its owner. It is a large damp, granite building and many of the most sensitive historic artefacts were deteriorating.

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"Although the popular museum paid its way, it didn't generate the capital investment needed to refurb the building and purchase much-needed climate-controlled cabinets. Smit, a wreck diver himself, said it was always a priority to keep the collection together if he could."

Collectors, maritime salvage dealers and the general public competed to secure lots in the room and also online and over the phone. From the outset, bizarre items, such as the third lot, a German WWII ship's binnacle, made large sums, with this lot selling for £1,050.

Surprisingly, some of the highest prices were for models. A wooden cross-section, scale model of a 17th-century 1st-rate ship sold for an astonishing £5,800, and two other wooden ship models sold for £4,000 and £4,300.

Probably the most viewed lot was a small quantity of coal recovered from the wreck of the Titanic, this sold for £1,500 above its £400-600 estimate.

A rope from Henry VIII's most famous ship The Mary Rose was perhaps a bargain at £2,000 but many other items made remarkable prices including a mid-20th century diving suit and helmet, lot 504, which sold for £2,600, lot 807, a 19th century, brass-bound wooden water cask made £3,500 and a brass tompion from a gun of the Scapa Flow wreck HMS Royal Oak sold for £3,200.

At the end of the sale, auctioneer David Lay said he had never seen a sale like it: "We had the highest number of bids left in advance for any sale we've ever held, over 2,000 bids, an incredible number, and bidders from all over the world bidding live online and over the phone during the auction, it was very exciting!" He described it as "an epic" auction and said he was very proud of the team.

You can view the results and see which lots sold and how much for, here.

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