Ninety
six years after the fateful night when the world’s worst
shipping disaster took place – the sinking of RMS Titanic
– Bonhams & Butterfields will auction an original deckchair
from the ship at its annual Marine Paintings, Ship Models, Scrimshaw
and Ocean Liner Memorabilia Sale at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum
in Brookline, Massachusetts, on Sunday, 7 May 2006.

Although hundreds of deckchairs would have been built for first
class passengers to use around the Promenade Deck of RMS Titanic,
the chair to be sold by Bonhams & Butterfields is one of
just six examples left in the world.

The deckchair was removed from the gigantic vessel moments
before she set sail from Queenstown, Cork, Ireland by local
photographer Thomas Barker – the man who took the only
known photograph of Titanic passengers embarking.

The chair was admired by Barker, a senior photographer working
at the time for The Cork Examiner (now The Irish Examiner),
when visiting aboard the RMS Titanic at Queenstown. Shortly
before the ship’s departure Barker asked Titanic officials
if he could keep it as a souvenir. Permission was granted. He
had hoped to use the deckchair in his garden, but subsequent
events changed his mind and he no longer wished to keep it.
Barker gave the chair to his housekeeper Mrs O’Brien, whose
family eventually brought it to England. A letter of provenance,
will be sold with it.

Thomas Barker’s claim to fame was that he was the photographer
who took the well-known picture of the Irish passengers waiting
to board RMS Titanic in the bow of the paddle tender ‘America’,
alongside the railway quay at Cork, Queenstown, Ireland. This
image is unique.

The original varnish beech wood framed deckchair has a fold-out
foot rest, brass fittings and incised five pointed star on the
back of it. Its original cane seat has been replaced since,
but Bonhams & Butterfield’s Marine specialists still
expect this impressive deckchair to fetch $75,000-100,000 when
it is sold on 7 May.

RMS Titanic sank on the night of 14 April 1912 when she hit
an iceberg in The Atlantic Ocean. Over 1500 souls perished in
the disaster.

For more details visit the Bonhams
web site.