VANCOUVER — A haunting photograph of the Titanic, one of the last taken of the doomed ship, has been sold by the Vancouver Maritime Museum for a paltry $4,935.
The Vancouver Province learned of the sale during research in the lead-up to the 100th anniversary of the sinking.
It was sold by former museum boss James Delgado more than a decade ago.
“It was felt at the time that the photograph . . . would be better off providing an infusion of cash into the acquisitions fund,” said the museum’s current executive director Simon Robinson.
“It is sad that museums sometimes feel the need to sell things. Regret about the sale would be the wrong word, but it’s always better to have something than not. The artifacts have become more and more valuable.”
The image shows Titanic serenely leaving the dock at Southampton, in effect waving goodbye to the world.
It is a visual record of mankind’s achievement in building a technological marvel and to the design follies that led to a shortage of lifeboats for the more than 1,500 who perished.
Simon Fraser University Archeology Prof. Robyn Woodward, who has lectured on the Titanic and sat on the museum’s board for two decades, said the sale never came up at the board level.
“I’m sure it was not done lightly. When you don’t have a huge acquisition budget, calls have to be made,” she said.
“But it would have been a fascinating shot to have in the collection because it has a Vancouver connection.”
The yellowish-brown, postcard-sized picture was donated to the museum in 1968 by Mrs. R.H. Hooper of nearby Richmond, B.C., whose father Henry William Clarke was chief engineer in Southampton when he took the photo on April 10, 1912.
It languished in the museum’s archives for 30 years, when its value was belatedly discovered by then-executive-director James Delgado.
In a 1998 interview, Delgado heralded the find as a rare bit of history and said an expert had authenticated its unique value.
“The photo became precious because the Titanic didn’t have a long life,” he said recently.
Despite its top-ranked billing as the “last” photo ever taken of the ship, Woodward said other pictures have surfaced from Cherbourg, France and Queenstown, Ireland, where passengers were picked up after leaving England.
“The pictures from Cherbourg mostly concern the famous people getting on board, but there is one shot of the ship leaving Queenstown,” she said.
Delgado blames the City of Vancouver for financial problems at the time of the sale, related to an aborted plan to relocate the museum from Vanier Park to North Vancouver, B.C.
Delgado was also the spearhead for the St. Roch fundraising expedition, that ended up spending more money than it raised.
“The original picture was sold because the museum was under hard times and needed money for its collection,” he said.
Delgado, 54, is now director of maritime heritage at the U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington, D.C.
He was chief scientist on a team that, in 2010, used the latest in 3D underwater robot technology to photograph the ship’s ghostly remains in a way never seen before.
He said it is a crash scene where the lights have finally been turned on over the 400-hectare debris field.
“Not one teacup has been missed. There are no secrets now,” he said. “It is eerie. The best museums are those that are real, like Titanic.”
The first comprehensive map of the entire sea floor around the site can be seen on National Geographic's website.
Delgado said analyzing the digital images will occupy underwater archeologists for years to come.
“The story has embedded itself in the world’s consciousness,” he said.
Those in Vancouver who care to see a Titanic exhibit will want to check out the Maritime Museum.
There is a two-piece model of the Titanic in its death throes and a collection of newspapers that recorded the terrible events as they slowly unfolded.
But no last photo.
“The Titanic story has grown over the years. It doesn’t seem to diminish,” said Robinson.
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