Gold pocket watch of Titanic’s wealthiest passenger goes up for sale in Chicago

John Jacob Astor IV kissed his pregnant wife goodbye, reassuring her that they would see each other again soon in New York.

As Lifeboat No. 4, with Madeleine Astor in it, creaked toward the frigid North Atlantic Ocean, her husband stood above on the deck of the Titanic, smoking a cigarette with other first-class passengers.

In a pocket of Astor’s blue serge suit was an 18-karat gold Patek Philippe watch engraved with his initials. That watch would be one of several items retrieved from Astor’s pockets as his body lay in a make-shift morgue in Halifax, Nova Scotia, days after the Titanic sank April 15, 1912.

The watch, along with Astor’s gold pencil case, are going on the auction block at 10 a.m. April 22 at Freeman’s auction house, 1550 W. Carroll Ave., in the West Loop.

The watch has attracted “global interest,” said Reginald Brack, Freeman’s watch expert.

“We have a very healthy amount of interest. We have institutional interest. We have interest from private collectors. … It’s going to be an exciting day for sure to see where this ends up,” Brack said.

The watch, a timepiece Astor bought from Tiffany & Co.’s flagship store in New York, is expected to fetch somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000, according to Freeman’s. It was made in 1904, must be wound by hand and “keeps good time,” Brack said.

Astor was arguably the most famous person on board the doomed ship, and certainly the most wealthy — a New York real estate baron whose father, of the same name, was America’s first multi-millionaire.

Astor was an “ungainly,” lanky figure who, despite being part of New York’s most elite society, was socially awkward, said Hugh Brewster, a Canadian author who has written several books about the White Star Line’s most infamous ship, including, “Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic’s First-Class Passengers and Their World.”

Astor had also written a science fiction novel, “A Journey in Other Worlds,” and was an amateur inventor, whose work included a bicycle brake.

Scandal stained Astor’s life a year before his death, after he divorced his first wife, Ava, and then married teenage socialite Madeleine Force, who was almost 30 years his junior.

“It was tabloid fodder because she was only 18 and he was 47,” Brewster said.

After the couple married, they headed off on a months-long European vacation, hoping for the American gossip about them to cool off.

But they decided to return to America after she became pregnant. They boarded the Titanic in Cherbourg, France, accompanied by his personal valet, her maid and a nursemaid Astor hired because he was worried about her “delicate condition,” and their Airedale terrier, “Kitty,” Brewster said.

When the ship first struck the iceberg, Astor, upon hearing the commotion, found Capt. Edward J. Smith and said he didn’t want his wife disturbed. But as the reality of the situation sank in, he accompanied his wife to the lifeboats.

“He then asks if he can accompany her on account of her delicate condition. He was refused,” Brewster said, noting that at that point in the evacuation, only women and children were allowed into lifeboats. “He threw her his gloves, and he stood with their Airedale Kitty and watched as the boat was lowered.”

Madeleine survived and gave birth to a son in August 1912. Her husband’s body was among the approximately 330 plucked from the North Atlantic. He was found wearing a life jacket.

“Most people died in about 20 minutes from hypothermia,” Brewster said.

His retrieved possessions also included a diamond ring, a belt with a gold buckle and cash in a variety of currencies, Brewster said.

Vincent Astor, John Astor’s 20-year-old son from his first marriage, inherited the watch and wore it until he died in 1959, according to Brack. “Since 1959, it’s been in various Astor vaults,” he said.

It is being offered now as part of the estate of distant Astor relative, Charlene Marshall, who died last year.

The watch is not the first Titanic-related timepiece to go on the auction block. Last year, another gold pocket watch — owned by passenger Isidor Straus, a co-owner of Macy’s department store — sold for $2.3 million in England, according to a story in The New York Times. Straus and his wife, Ida, both died when the ship went down. They were last seen sitting arm in arm on the Titanic deck.

To learn more about the auction, go to www.freemansauction.com.