Frozen in time: Titanic victim’s pocket watch set to fetch ₹52 lakh at auction

More than a century after the RMS Titanic vanished into the icy depths of the North Atlantic, a haunting keepsake from that fateful night is making headlines. A corroded pocket watch, recovered from the body of a Danish passenger, remains stopped at the very moment the ship sank on April 15, 1912 and it’s now going under the hammer.
The Titanic, operated by the White Star Line, was a luxury liner carrying 2,224 people on its maiden voyage. Among its passengers were some of the richest individuals of the time, many of whom became a distant memory after the disaster claimed over 1,500 lives. But from the tragedy emerges a rare relic, one that quite literally stopped time.

The pocket watch belonged to 27-year-old Hans Christensen Givard, a second-class passenger from Denmark. Though he perished in the sinking, his body was recovered, and among his personal effects was a woman’s pocket watch—believed to have been a sentimental keepsake.
Now, this saltwater-stained timepiece is set to be auctioned on April 26, 2025, by Henry Aldridge and Son, a British auction house specialising in Titanic artefacts. The watch is expected to fetch as much as GBP 50,000, which is approximately EUR 58,000, USD 66,000, or ₹52 lakh INR.
Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge described the piece as a deeply moving object:
“The mechanism of the watch is frozen in time, at the moment when the cold waters of the North Atlantic swallowed not only its owner but also the most famous transatlantic ship of all time.”

After the tragedy, Givard’s belongings were returned to his brother in Denmark. The pocket watch has remained in the family ever since and was even displayed as a key exhibit at Tivoli Garden’s 2012 Titanic centenary exhibition in Copenhagen, curated by maritime historian Claes-Göran Wetterholm.
The auction is already drawing interest from collectors and Titanic enthusiasts across the globe. While this is not the first Titanic item to make it to auction, it is certainly among the most emotionally resonant. In a previous sale, the same auction house sold a pocket watch recovered from John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest man on board the Titanic, for GBP 900,000 (₹9.4 crore INR).
Though less opulent than Astor’s timepiece, Hans Givard’s watch is a rare fragment of history, one that bears silent witness to a night of heroism, heartbreak, and unimaginable loss. As it heads to auction, it reminds us that while time may move on, some moments are etched in eternity.