The Oceanic's bridge bell went down with the ship in 1914 but was not recovered during salvage operations in the 1920s and 70s. Courtesy Shetland Museum.
Shetland Museum has acquired the bridge bell from the Titanic’s sister ship more than 90 years after it was lost.
The bell is from the liner RMS Oceanic, which sank in 1914 off the coast of Foula in the Shetland Islands. How it was recovered is a mystery, however, as it had not been recorded during operations to salvage items from the vessel in the 1920s and 70s.
“The wreck itself was extensively salvaged,” said Tommy Watt, curator of the Shetland Museum. “We have been in touch with the two divers who were there (in the 1970s), however there was no record of the bell on finds from the dives. We think it was taken after that dive, maybe in the late 1970s.”
The museum acquired it after a local diver spotted it on the Ocean Liner Auctions internet site and alerted the museum. It had been put up for sale by a local shipping agency.
After talks with the owners and a 50 per cent grant from the National Museums for Scotland’s National Fund For Acquisitions it was removed from auction and bought by the museum.
Sister ship to the Titanic, Oceanic was a luxury liner launched in 1899 and could carry some 2000 passengers and crew. Courtesy Shetland Museum.
“We’re absolutely delighted,” said Tommy. “It’s a key artefact for us - the wreck is very famous locally and nationally and the bell is quite a visual reference from the bridge.”
“We know very little about its past history,” he added. “It was discovered among the effects of a retired landlady of a local guest house and was said to have been used as a door stop.”
It then passed through the hands of several antique dealers before being put up for sale on the auction site.
The 215 metre Oceanic was launched in 1899 at the same Belfast shipyards that went on to build the Titanic. Both ships were operated by White Star Line and the Oceanic in fact helped to return survivors from the April 1914 sinking of the Titanic.
Oceanic was turned into an armed merchant cruiser at the start of World War One, but shared its sister ship’s ill-fate when it ran aground on the Hoevdi Grund, a reef off Foula Island, on September 8 1914. Fortunately in this case there was no loss of life although the ship was declared a total loss.
Shetland Museum is due to move into its new home in Lerwick in 2006. Courtesy Shetland Museum.
The cast bronze bell from the ship’s bridge is about 30cm high and is still in good condition. It will be displayed with Shetland Museum’s collection of artefacts from the wreck when it reopens later in 2006 at its newly built site in Lerwick.
“The ship was an ocean liner of extremely high class,” said Tommy. “When the ship itself broke up quite a lot of these things ended up on the local shores…some of the pieces we have got are the ornamental wooden carvings that the ship was dripping in.”
Tommy revealed that although the museum had been successful in obtaining the Oceanic’s bell, it had been unlucky in a similar case: “There was a teapot from the ship that also came up for sale that was actually on eBay (the internet auction site),” he explained.
“We did contact the seller (an islander) to see if they would sell it directly but in the end we got outbid by £20 in the last few seconds, so it’s now been lost to America.”
“We win some we lose some,” he conceded. “It’s disappointing that an islander did not see the heritage value of it.”
