AMHERST, NH.- Following its successful 100th Anniversary RMS Titanic sale in April, RR Auction will offer the public the opportunity once again to bid on a vast array of museum quality artifacts and rare signed documents and memorabilia relating to one of the grandest, most legendary vessels of the sea. These surviving items not only convey the astonishing, historic story of Titanic, but they also represent some of the most highly prized and sought after maritime memorabilia on the market today.

Included in the many live auction lots along with will be an original Titanic deck chair -- one of only seven complete deck chairs known to exist -- and an amazing and extremely rare vintage photo of the “blueberg” iceberg just two days before it struck and sank the Titanic.

Amazing and extremely rare original 9.75 x 8 photo of a uniquely-shaped ‘blueberg’ photographed by the captain of the Leyland Line steamer S. S. Etonian two days before Titanic collided with it. The photo shows a massive iceberg with a very distinctive elliptical shape, and is captioned in black ink by the captain, “Copyright. Blueberg taken by Captain W. F. Wood S. S. Etonian on 12/4/12 in Lat 41° 50 W Long 49° 50 N.

Titanic struck 14/4/12 and sank in three hours.” A “blueberg,” as indicated in Wood’s caption, simply refers to the tinting of an iceberg from the sun’s rays, much like the blue of the ocean.

Frederick Fleet, the Titanic lookout on duty who first spotted the iceberg, and Joseph Scarrott, an able-bodied seaman, each drew sketches of the iceberg—sketches which appear eerily similar to the iceberg in this photo. Their drawings are reproduced on pages 140-141 of Titanic: Triumph and Tragedy (second edition, by John P. Eaton and Charles A. Haas, W. W. Norton & Company, 1995).

Because there are, of course, no surviving photographs of the iceberg taken from Titanic’s deck on that fateful night, several photographs of icebergs in the vicinity of the collision, taken before and after the event, have been offered throughout the years as candidates for the iceberg responsible for the disaster. In his book A Night to Remember (illustrated edition, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976), Walter Lord reveals a photo of an iceberg taken from the German ship Prinz Adalbert, near the scene of the sinking on the afternoon of April 15, 1912, that closely matches the elliptical shape of Wood’s photograph offered here, but with a slightly different shape attributable to the angle of the photographer and the aftermath of impact.

The fact that the particular iceberg in the Etonian image offered here is known to have been photographed at a position arguably 2-3 days’ iceberg travel time to Titanic’s foundering position, and that it substantially matches both the sketches drawn by Titanic’s crewmen and the photo taken after the ship went down, allows noted Titanic experts to establish this photograph as capturing the iceberg everyone has been talking about for the past century

“In my professional judgment, this iceberg is the one that sunk the Titanic,” Titanic artifact collector Stanley Lehrer.

Lehrer is noted for his collections of rare Titanic artifacts that have been displayed around the world.

“The captain took the pictures because he was fascinated with the unusual shape of the iceberg. This particular iceberg had an ellipse on the top right of the iceberg,” Lehrer added.

RR Auction expects the photograph to sell for $8,000 to $10,000 when bidding closes on Sunday Dec. 16th. The photo is one of more than 400 items from the Titanic that are up for bidding.

This historic assemblage of artifacts, documents, and memorabilia will be available for pre-auction bidding starting on Saturday, December 8, 2012 and final live bidding will take place on Sunday, December 16, 2012 at the Crowne-Plaza Hotel in Nashua, NH. Items may be viewed at the hotel on Saturday, December 15. An illustrated preview of a number of the premier lots is currently available at www.rrauction.com.
The Iceberg that Sunk Titanic up at auction.