Newly-Unearthed Photo May Reveal Iceberg That Sunk The Titanic
A rediscovered photo, that appears to show the iceberg that sank the Titanic 112 years ago, goes on auction this month.
The newly-unearthed black-and-white photo was captured by Nova Scotian undertaker John Snow Jr. two days after the Titanic sank on April 14, 1912.
Photo taken 112 years ago of the iceberg which sunk the Titanic on auctionhttps://t.co/cgOJF2QO9a
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Around 1,500 people died on the Titanic after it collided with an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage.
Snow Jr. — who was chief embalmer of funeral directors John Snow & Co. — took the photo of the iceberg as he was en route to the wreckage site of the Titanic aboard the C.S. MacKay-Bennett on April 16, 1912, after he was summoned to help collect some of the bodies for burial.
The five-inch by three-inch photograph taken by the undertaker shows a large glacier oddly shaped like an elephant above the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean.
Snow Jr. later put the photograph on a cardboard mount and simply captioned the image as “Titanic.”
‘It is an Extremely Rare Photograph’
The image of the iceberg was passed down through the Snow family until it was acquired by a collector of Titanic memorabilia about 30 years ago.
The rare photograph is now up for sale by Henry Aldridge & Son Auctioneers of Devizes in Wiltshire, U.K. It is expected to fetch between $5,000 and $8,500.
“Nobody can say for sure that this was the iceberg that sank the Titanic,” auctioneer Andrew Aldridge tells The Mirror.
“But what we can say is that after the rescue ship Carpathia, the Mackay-Bennett was one of the first ships to reach the wreck site and that the undertaker on board decided to take a photo of this iceberg.
“He must have had his reasons for taking a photo of this iceberg. He captioned it ‘Titanic’ and mounted it for posterity.
“It hasn’t been sold before and was acquired directly from Mr Snow’s family by our vendor in the early 1990s. It is an extremely rare photograph and we are sure it will attract a lot of interest.”
The Mystery of The Iceberg That Sunk The Titanic
According to science publication Popular Mechanics, the identity of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic is still unconfirmed. Experts have long scrutinized two photographs of separate icebergs that may have brought the ship down.
However, Popular Mechanics reports that this newly-unearthed photograph up for auction reveals a third frozen chunk — casting new doubt over which iceberg was responsible for the sinking of the Titanic.
Image credits: Header photo via Wikimedia Commons.
