A life jacket worn by a first-class passenger as she fled the sinking Titanic was sold for £670,000 ($906,000) at an auction on Saturday, nearly double its pre-sale estimate and among the highest prices ever paid for an artefact from the 1912 disaster.
The flotation device belonged to Laura Mabel Francatelli, who was 22 when the ship went down. She boarded Lifeboat No. 1 with her employer, fashion designer Lady Lucy Duff Gordon, and Lady Lucy's husband, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon. That lifeboat could hold 40 people. However, it was lowered into the North Atlantic with just 12 aboard, leaving 28 places unfilled, according to The Irish Times.
