The Real Necklace From ‘Titanic’ Turned Up In The Wildest Place

Before you settle down to watch the film again, you’ve probably got a few questions to ask. Firstly, who were the Clarks? What were they like as a couple prior to boarding the Titanic? Just like Jack and Rose, their love was deep, loyal, and most importantly, strong — even during a once-in-a-lifetime disaster.

Walter and Virginia were residents of Los Angeles, California. They’d been married for a while but hadn’t yet enjoyed a honeymoon together. So, the husband and wife looked to put that right in 1912. Yep, they departed the U.S. for a European trip to finally celebrate their nuptials.

Sounds romantic, wouldn’t you agree? Mind you, while Virginia and Walter took in the sights on their holiday, they were both thinking ahead to a certain date, too. If the honeymoon went to plan, the pair knew they’d miss out, and neither of them really wanted that. So what was the occasion, then?

Simple — it was a special birthday. You see, Walter and Virginia were the proud parents of a little boy who was back in LA, and he was set to turn two during their honeymoon. On that note, the pair decided to cut their holiday short, aiming to get back in time to celebrate the milestone.

And that’s how the Clarks ended up on the Titanic. They managed to bag a spot in first-class, so they would've journeyed back to the States in style. The depiction of those parts of the ship in the movie highlights just how fancy it was! But as we all know, this voyage was ultimately destined to end in disaster.

The chain of tragic events began on the evening of April 14, 1912. At that point, the boat scraped across a large slab of ice while traversing the Atlantic Ocean. The crew believed that no significant damage had been done at first, yet the contact had actually caused a massive tear in the Titanic’s lower body.

As the collision happened, Virginia was relaxing in her first-class room alone. Unsurprisingly, the loud sounds and vibrations from the collision startled her, so the mom decided to look for her husband. You can’t blame her, right? We’d definitely do the same if we were in her position!

Speaking of Walter, he was in one of the parlors at that stage, sitting alongside his fellow first-class passengers. It’s said that Virginia’s hubby was enjoying a card game when the Titanic struck the iceberg. But the impact didn’t appear to concern him, as he continued to play.

That reaction doesn’t surprise us, to be honest. Think about it — these men and women had no reason to believe they’d be in any danger on the Titanic. It was described as “unsinkable,” for crying out loud! What could possibly go wrong? A bump shouldn’t have caused too much damage, right?

Well, once Virginia reached Walter, the couple started to catch on to the severity of the situation. And the couple knew what had to be done next. Yes, the L.A. residents began to plot a dramatic escape route off of the sinking ship.

Walter and Virginia weren’t alone in that respect, of course. As reality started to dawn on the other passengers, they tried to find a way off the doomed vessel, too. We don’t need to visualize the panic in our minds — Cameron’s movie does a superb job of capturing that feeling in its latter half.

Nearly three hours on from the fateful collision, the Titanic plunged into the icy waters, leaving behind plenty of shell-shocked people on the scattered lifeboats. No one could’ve seen this coming when the ship first set sail. The website History.com reports that, tragically, over 1,500 souls perished.

As one of history’s most infamous disasters, the Titanic’s memory is kept alive through fascinating exhibitions that showcase lost items found in the wreckage. The Luxor Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, housed one back in the spring of 2017. This and other Titanic exhibitions had some breathtaking objects on display from the night Walter and Virginia's love story changed forever.

The exhibition was called “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition.” Premier Exhibitions were responsible for putting the show together, and it marked a significant landmark. Yep, the opening day coincided with the sinking of the boat 105 years earlier on April 15. As we just mentioned, though, that isn’t the only Titanic exhibition to open up since the disaster.

Much like the exhibition in Vegas, they’ve all displayed intriguing pieces that give some insight into what it was like on board the famous vessel — including the night it sank. One object in particular reveals the fate of Walter and Virginia.

Some objects on display are ordinary, but priceless. For instance, Southampton’s SeaCity Museum displayed an old napkin that came from the ship. Judging by where it was discovered, it's a miracle the napkin remained intact for so long...

The napkin was found on the Atlantic seabed. Experts have concluded that it came from one of the first-class areas of the ship. So, Walter and Virginia quite likely saw serviettes of that type while enjoying the food on board. Of course, more personal artifacts were recovered, as well.

Guernsey’s Auctioneers & Brokers showcased a different find for visitors to look at. Yes, two pale gloves made from cotton were uncovered from a bag sitting in the wreckage. It’s thought that these would’ve been worn by a guest on the boat — perhaps even Walter or Virginia — as opposed to a member of the crew.

Sticking with Guernsey’s Auctioneers & Brokers, another item was displayed as well. Incredibly, a $5 bill dating back to 1907 had been found among the articles under the ocean’s surface. It hadn’t really deteriorated as much as you might think, which is quite a surprise. Someone eventually bought the item in 2012.

A pair of menus from the Titanic also made their way to SeaCity Museum, too. One was catered for the first-class guests, while the other would’ve been sitting in the second-class eating area. Chillingly, they were both prepared just hours before the disaster. Could Walter and Virginia have seen a copy?

But as interesting as those finds are, SeaCity Museum boasted one more artifact that arguably trumped them all. And that isn’t just referring to the state of the piece. You see, the tale surrounding it really brought the tragedy into focus.

The item in question was a pocket timepiece, and unlike a lot of other artifacts from the Titanic, it wasn’t discovered on the seabed. Instead, the watch was recovered from a body. The corpse was that of Sidney Sedunary — a member of the crew. And the device itself had come to a halt when the boat was close to sinking.

So it’s fair to say that those exhibits have showcased plenty of intriguing objects. And if we go back to Las Vegas’ “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition,” visitors were given the chance to see a truly special piece in 2017. It was uncovered in Virginia and Walter’s room on the sunken vessel.

The artifact was a gorgeous locket, made from 18-carat gold. It was definitely Virginia’s, as the exterior has her initials carved into them. Talk about fancy. But that’s got us thinking of something else.

Remember when we said Jack and Rose’s romance from Titanic had similarities to Walter and Virginia’s real-life tale? Well, the locket serves as a connection. Cast your minds back to the movie. As any fan will tell you, the Heart of the Ocean necklace plays a fairly significant role in the plot.

For those of you who haven’t seen Titanic, we’re heading into spoiler territory here, so be careful! Anyway, as the film winds down, an elderly Rose decides to release the necklace into the ocean. It’s her way of making peace with the devastating loss of Jack, who died in the disaster.

As for the real-life locket, its story isn’t far from the plot of the movie. You see, just like Jack and Rose in the classic tear-jerker, Walter and Virginia were separated forever on the night the Titanic sank. We hope you’ve got some tissues ready for this next part, because you’ll probably need them.

To go into more detail, one of the experts working at Premier Exhibitions spoke to the Urbo website in the spring of 2018. Her name’s Alexandra Klingelhofer, and she’d become very familiar with the Clarks’ tale while everything was being put together in Las Vegas. She cast her mind back to their attempted escape.

“When [Walter and Virginia] got up to the boat deck, they were still separating men from women and children and he placed her in one of the lifeboats,” Klingelhofer revealed. “The boat was supposed to pick up additional passengers as it got lowered down each level. But logistics prevented that from happening.”

“So the boat ended up on the ocean surface with many other seats available,” Klingelhofer continued. “Had they known earlier, Walter could have gotten onto the boat with [Virginia], but he didn’t. He stayed with the other first-class men and bravely went down with the ship.”

We can’t imagine what Virginia went through when she found out there was enough space after all. It was the cruelest of twists. But just like Jack in the movie, Walter essentially gave up his life to save his true love in the most dire of circumstances. In the moment, it was unclear whether or not his sacrifice would be in vain...

Meanwhile, another well-to-do couple on the ship contended with a similar fate. Their names were Isidor and Ida Straus. The former would’ve been well known at the time, as he was the proprietor of Macy’s. And, mirroring Walter and Virginia, Isidor and Ida made their way to the life rafts as the Titanic was sinking.

Unlike Walter, though, Isidor was given the chance to nab a spot on a lifeboat with his wife due to how old he was. Yet the Macy’s man turned it down, as he didn’t want preferential treatment compared to the other passengers. Wow. That must’ve taken a lot of courage on his part.

Mind you, Ida couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning her partner like that, so she stepped away from the raft, too. From there, History.com reports, they went back to their room and waited for the inevitable. At this point, though, Virginia was already sailing away in a lifeboat. She was one of the few people with a chance of getting back home.

Thanks to her husband's brave efforts, Virginia safely reached America following the disaster and reunited with her young son. After that, the mom continued with her life in the States, ahead of her passing in the late 1950s. We wonder how often the Titanic was on her mind during those years?

It’s also unfortunate that the locket was found after Virginia’s death. According to Today, it was uncovered during the mid-1990s while a team explored the sunken ship — some 23 years before the Vegas exhibition. Sadly, by the time the connection had been made to the Clarks, their son wasn’t alive, either.

And it wasn’t just the locket that was found. On top of that, there were a few more pieces hidden away in Virginia and Walter’s room. Apparently, they’d been stored inside a “small pouch” under the water and had somehow survived the tragic sinking of the ship.

Well, the bag held other golden items in the shape of jacket pins and cufflinks. A few poker chips were in there as well. Someone might’ve scored a win during the voyage, then! To round it all off, a makeup receptacle was sitting in the pouch, too. And much like the other objects, it had a gold exterior.

It was all included in the exhibit alongside the locket, much to Klingelhofer’s delight. Speaking to Today in April 2017, she said, “It’s especially exciting when we can link specific artifacts to passengers of the Titanic, as it is extremely rare. We’re thrilled to be able to help tell the Clarks’ story through this special display.” None of us will forget it in a hurry. But discoveries like this raise questions about why the Titanic was such a deathtrap in the first place.

When the Titanic first set sail, though, no one expected her to meet such a disastrous end. Initially, you see, she was hailed as something of a maritime marvel. The steamer first set off from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912, and made a pair of stops in France and Ireland before traveling on toward New York City. But as we know, the vessel would never make it there. Yes, sadly, just four days into her journey, at 11:40 p.m., the Titanic smashed into an iceberg – filling the ship’s supposedly unsinkable frame with water.

Then, within hours, the Titanic plunged to the bottom of the ocean, taking more than half of the 2,224 passengers with her. And such a large-scale disaster naturally required a proper inquiry, which British officials completed that same year. But while the Brits ultimately blamed the passenger liner’s demise on the iceberg, Molony contends that they in fact knew otherwise. What’s more, he says that he has the proof to back this extraordinary claim up.

Yet the Titanic’s story began further back in the early 20th century, when the British shipping firm White Star Line started to feel pressure from its competition. German companies such as Hamburg America and Norddeutscher Lloyd had begun launching fast-moving passenger ships, you see, and White Star simply couldn’t compete. So, as a consequence, the British business turned its attention to building bigger and more lavish vessels that compensated in other ways for their slower speeds.

In the end, White Star built three ships that fit this new mold: the RMS Olympic, the HMHS Britannic and the RMS Titanic. And the third ship in particular exemplified the fleet’s new direction into luxury cruising. Rather than taking on the English manor-style decor of older ships, the vessel had a much modern, lighter feel that was inspired by the timelessness of The Ritz hotel.

The ship boasted more than just elegant interior design, though; she also came with uncommon upscale features. For instance, passengers could dip their toes in saltwater pools, play squash or relax in a Turkish bath. They could also indulge in the massage room, the sauna and the steam room. The ship played host to high-class restaurants, too, as well as opulent guest rooms – for the first-class passengers, anyway.

That said, even third-class patrons had much-improved quarters. Previously, low-cost tickets gave passengers access to open dormitories without enough food or bathrooms for everyone. The Titanic, by contrast, offered a different kind of travel experience. In total, she could accommodate 1,006 guests in third, 614 in second and 833 people in first class. More than 900 crew members fit on board, too.

But perhaps the most alluring aspect of a voyage on the Titanic was the fact that she had been advertised as an unsinkable vessel. And White Star made that assertion at a time when people had great faith in science and technological advancements. As such, many of those boarding the Titanic apparently did so in the belief that there was no way the ship would sink.

Nonetheless, the Titanic did have safety features that were meant to keep the boat afloat if water did somehow start to seep on board. Below deck, for instance, the vessel had 16 compartments with 15 bulkheads built to exceed the waterline. The area had watertight doors, too, which would close if there was a breach.

So, many of the Titanic’s 2,224 passengers apparently got on board with the presumption that they had booked tickets to travel on the ocean’s safest vessel. Legend even has it that someone embarking on the ship asked a staff member if it was unsinkable. And, reportedly, the employee’s response – as immortalized in the movie Titanic – was “God himself could not sink this ship!”

At first, it was smooth sailing on the Titanic when she began her journey from Southampton, England. She subsequently chugged on to pick up passengers in the French city of Cherbourg and later stopped off in Cobh, Ireland. Then, following that, all 1,316 passengers and 885 employees had boarded, meaning it was time to head for New York.

Four days into the journey, however, the Titanic’s captain, Edward Smith, received a message from a nearby ship called the Californian. The latter vessel’s crew warned, “We are stopped and surrounded by ice.” But Smith and his first officer, William Murdoch, decided to disregard the warning – instead pushing ahead at the ship’s near-top speed.

Then, less than an hour later, the Titanic crew saw the situation for themselves when a sailor signaled the location of an iceberg directly in the vessel’s path. First Officer Murdoch therefore ordered the engines to be shut off, while the ship herself was steered to the left to avoid the frozen mass. But the effort was in vain, and the Titanic scraped its side against the iceberg.

The impact apparently punctured the side of the Titanic below the waterline, and six of her below-deck compartments duly began to flood with water. If only four of these areas had filled, the ship would have survived the collision. But as the ocean poured into a half-dozen containers, the ship started to sink and water began to breach the bulkheads – filling other compartments, too.

The Titanic was unsalvageable at this point, and so the passengers and crew had to begin evacuating the sinking ship. But that necessity presented yet another problem: no one had put enough thought into preparing for a disembarkment at sea. And this lack of foresight ultimately spelled trouble for many of the people on board.

After all, the ship didn’t have the means to evacuate all of the passengers; instead, she only had approximately half of the lifeboats needed to carry everyone on board. And to make matters worse, officers apparently started sending the smaller vessels to sea without filling them to capacity. This, too, came down to faults with their training, as the crew simply didn’t know how many people could safely fit on a single lifeboat.

In addition, the crew left third-class passengers to save themselves – meaning many of them drowned in their lower-deck barracks as the ship went down. At first, though, the Titanic actually sank more slowly than her engineer predicted. Upon hearing that six compartments had begun to fill, you see, he had said that the ship would be underwater in 90 minutes at most.

And yet, two and a half hours after striking the iceberg, the Titanic remained afloat. But then everything changed. The front of the ship slipped underwater, and her stern rose into the air. Passengers then clung to the last floating piece of the doomed liner, only for this to also sink minutes later – dragging everyone holding onto it into the icy water below.

The ocean water, meanwhile, was at a temperature of a mere 28 °F, proving lethal to nearly every single person left floating on the surface. Unfortunately, those who were left stranded in the sea suffered from a slew of fatal side effects, with most dying from cardiac arrest in around 15 to 30 minutes. And the lifeboats could only save a mere five people from the water, even though there was the capacity on these vessels for 500 more survivors in total.

It took around two more hours for the nearby RMS Carpathia to arrive on the scene. Consequently, that ship carried all of the Titanic’s survivors – approximately 710 people – to their destination in New York City. But before the luckiest passengers even arrived in America, investigators had already begun their search for the cause of the doomed liner’s sinking.

Both the U.S. and the U.K. helmed inquiries into the Titanic’s tragic end. And on the American side, investigators concluded that the crew had acted as they should have, meaning the sinking could only be described as an act of God. The Brits, by contrast, determined that while Captain Smith had indeed followed protocol, the ship herself was going too fast – especially with an ice warning in place.

As such, the long-held consensus has been that the Titanic went down solely because of the iceberg. However, journalist Molony came up with a new theory, and he found crucial evidence to back it up. He believed, you see, that the ship’s structure had been compromised long before she had ever set sail for New York City.

And Molony had already dedicated three decades to Titanic-related research when he uncovered what he believed to be new evidence. In the early 2010s, he purchased a stack of Titanic photos from a descendant of the engineering chief of Harland and Wolff – the company responsible for building the ship.

Then, as Molony went through the pile of pictures, he noticed that a previously hidden detail on the Titanic’s hull was depicted in one of the images. In particular, black markings that were around 30 feet long streaked the side of the vessel. And, worryingly, the striations appeared to be in the same spot where the ship would crash into the iceberg.

Yet in order to figure out the cause of the markings, Molony had to turn to the experts. In 2017 he told Smithsonian, “We asked some naval architects what this could be, and nobody knew and everybody was intrigued.” Still, Molony did at least get one good theory as to the streak’s source. The journalist said, “The best suggestion at the time was that this was a reflection.”

Nevertheless, Molony said that he knew of nothing on the dock or shoreline that could have created a reflection like that. So, he kept digging, as the placement of the markings was too suspicious to ignore. And in 2017 he explained the potential significance of these anomalies to The Independent, saying, “We are looking at the exact area where the iceberg struck.”

Molony added, “We appear to have a weakness or damage to the hull in that specific place before [the Titanic] even left Belfast.” And soon enough, engineers based at Imperial College London presented their own theory as to the source of the streak. Specifically, they thought that the Titanic may have had a fire break out on board before her maiden voyage.

It apparently wasn’t just any blaze, either. You see, the Titanic had a three-story-tall coal store, and some experts believe that the fire had first sparked there. And according to these specialists, a dozen men had tried to extinguish the raging blaze. The inferno would have been difficult to douse, too, as it reportedly reached a temperature of more than 1,800 °F.

By Molony’s estimates, then, the fire could have broken out up to three weeks before the Titanic’s launch day. Allegedly, though, those in charge of her voyage swept news of the blaze under the rug. After all, such an incident could have either delayed the unsinkable ship’s send-off or been the source of bad press.

Molony added that the supposed Titanic fire could have affected the U.K.’s reputation at the worst moment. The journalist explained to Smithsonian, “They’d been facing massive competition from the Germans and others for the valuable immigrant trade. You don’t want a loss of public confidence in the whole of the British maritime [industry].”

Yet ignoring the alleged coal fire proved to be a fatal mistake – according to Molony, at least. As the Titanic expert explained to the Independent, “We have metallurgy experts telling us that when you get that level of temperature against steel, it makes it brittle and reduces its strength by up to 75 percent.”

If this theory is to be believed, then, the Titanic’s heat-weakened steel would have provided little defense against the iceberg jutting from the sea. Instead, her hull crumbled as she collided with the frozen mass. The steel then ripped open, the below-deck compartments filled with water and the massive ship began to sink into the ocean.

Interestingly, though, Molony said that his argument wasn’t necessarily a new one. Apparently, those who had worked on the Titanic’s engines had reported the coal fire shortly after the vessel went down. The U.K.’s inquiry into the sinking actually mentioned a blaze, too. Still, the journalist alleged that despite all these warning signs, the judge helming the inquest seemingly played down the seriousness of the fire.

In addition, Molony felt that the judge had an ulterior motive in playing down the incident. He said, “He was a shipping interest judge. And, in fact, he presided at a toast at the Shipwrights’ Guild four years earlier, saying, ‘May nothing ever adversely affect the great carrying power of this wonderful country.’ So, he closes down efforts to pursue the fire, and he makes this finding that the iceberg acted alone.”

As such, the fire theory makes sense to Molony – and a few other experts, too. Ray Boston spent more than 20 years learning about and researching the Titanic, and he came to the conclusion that a blaze had broken out as many as ten days before the vessel departed. Boston has also said that the supposed pre-departure inferno could very well have foreshadowed “serious explosions” on the ship’s journey to New York.

But plenty of people have their doubts about Molony’s hypothesis. For one thing, he’s not the first to try and rewrite the story of the Titanic and its untimely demise. In the past, you see, some have theorized that German U-boats launched a torpedo into the vessel. Even more bizarrely, some have even said that an ancient Egyptian curse led to the ship’s tragic end.

All in all, then, Molony’s theory sounds much more plausible than these alternatives. Yet other experts stand behind the ruling that it was the iceberg – not a pre-launch fire – that ultimately brought the vessel down. The British Titanic Society’s former secretary Dave Hill told The New York Times, “A fire may have accelerated [the sinking]. But in my view, the Titanic would have sunk anyway.”

But Molony maintains his beliefs, and he countered the iceberg-centric arguments by pointing to the original inquiry’s findings. This, he claimed, had plenty of errors – such as the assertion that the Titanic had plunged into the depths in one piece. After all, when divers pinpointed the wreckage’s location in 1985, they realized that the vessel had snapped in half before coming to rest on the seafloor.

Indeed, Molony suggested taking the oldest Titanic-related inquests with a grain of salt. He told Smithsonian, “Just because an official finding says it doesn’t make it true.” The journalist reiterated this point of view to The Independent, saying, “The official Titanic inquiry branded the sinking as an act of God.”

Molony continued, “It’s a perfect storm of extraordinary factors coming together: fire, ice and criminal negligence… She should never have been put to sea.” So while most of the Titanic’s secrets went down with the ship, Molony’s theory presents a new angle to a tale that never becomes less fascinating – or heartbreaking.