Shipwrecks and Watches – 4 Remarkable Stories
Throughout maritime history, many shipwrecks have left tragic marks on our collective memory. Among the objects recovered from these disasters, watches stand out as silent witnesses to decisive moments. These artefacts served as highly valued precision instruments; they hold personal stories, reveal technical details and mark the exact instant at which time stood still.
Herbert Ingram's Watch: An Artefact Recovered from the Wreck of the Lady Elgin (1860)
The Lady Elgin was a passenger steamship operating on Lake Michigan, in the United States. On 8 September 1860, the ship sank off the coast of Illinois after colliding with a schooner named the Augusta. The tragedy claimed the lives of more than 300 people and is considered one of the worst maritime disasters in the history of the Great Lakes.
Among the passengers was Herbert Ingram, a British journalist and Member of Parliament. Ingram was the founder of The Illustrated London News, the first illustrated newspaper with a mass circulation in the United Kingdom. He died in the disaster together with his 16-year-old son.
The Shipwreck
The Lady Elgin had left Milwaukee, Wisconsin, carrying a delegation from the Democratic Party, bound for Chicago. In the early hours of the morning, in poor visibility, the schooner Augusta collided with the Lady Elgin. The ship sank quickly, causing the deaths of most of the passengers on board.
Herbert Ingram was identified among the dead. His body was recovered and buried in the United States. News of his death was widely reported in the British press of the time, owing to his prominence as a public figure.
The Recovery of the Watch
In 1991, a team of divers located the wreck of the Lady Elgin on the bed of Lake Michigan. The following year, 1992, a gold pocket watch was recovered and later identified as having belonged to Herbert Ingram. The identification was based on an inscription bearing his name.
The watch was preserved and studied as a historical artefact. In May 2025, 165 years after the shipwreck, the piece was returned to Ingram's home town of Boston, in Lincolnshire, England. The handover ceremony was organised by the Boston Guildhall Museum, which officially received the watch into its collection.
Oscar Scott Woody's Watch – A Symbol of Service in the Sinking of the Titanic (1912)
On the night of 14 April 1912, the largest liner in the world struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic, causing the shipwreck that would forever mark modern maritime history. On board the RMS Titanic were some 2,200 people, among them five postal clerks. One of them was Oscar Scott Woody, an American citizen from North Carolina. His pocket watch, later recovered from his body, would become a material symbol of duty fulfilled to the very end.
The Career of Oscar Scott Woody
Oscar Scott Woody was born in 1871 in the town of Roxboro, in the state of North Carolina. He began his postal career as a railway mail clerk, a demanding job that involved continuous work in moving mail cars. After more than a decade of service, he was appointed a sea post clerk, representing the United States of America on transatlantic voyages.
In April 1912, he was assigned to the maiden voyage of the Titanic, boarding at Southampton and bound for New York. On board, he and his colleagues – John Starr March, William Logan Gwinn, John Richard Jago Smith and James Bertram Williamson – were responsible for processing international mail. The ship was carrying some 3,423 sacks of mail, part of it registered and of high value.
The Night of the Sinking
The night of 14 April was Oscar Woody's 44th birthday. According to later accounts, he and the other postal clerks are said to have celebrated quietly in the hours before the tragedy. At around 11.40 pm, the Titanic struck an iceberg, breaching several of the hull's watertight compartments.
Immediately after the impact, the postal clerks went down to the lower deck to try to save the sacks of registered mail. Witnesses reported seeing the men hauling heavy sacks up to the upper decks with great effort, battling the water that was already flooding the compartments. None of the five clerks survived.
The body of Oscar Scott Woody was one of only two identified among the postal clerks who died. It was recovered on 24 April 1912 by the cable ship CS Mackay-Bennett, chartered by the White Star Line to recover victims.
The Recovered Watch
Among the belongings found on Woody's body was an Ingersoll pocket watch. The piece showed signs of water damage, but the dial was still partly visible. The watch had stopped shortly after the impact, as salt water entered the movement.
The watch was returned to Woody's widow, Leelia Woody, in early May 1912, together with other personal effects: a broken watch chain, a penknife, Masonic membership cards and cufflinks. The return of his belongings was accompanied by a formal letter from the shipping company.
For several decades, the watch remained in the family's possession. It was later lent for temporary exhibition at institutions such as the Smithsonian National Postal Museum and the Titanic Museum Attraction, in the United States.
In November 2022, the watch was auctioned by Henry Aldridge & Son, in the United Kingdom. The piece sold for £98,000 (approximately $116,000), a price that reflected not only its state of preservation but also its historical significance.
Posthumous Recognition
The dedication of Oscar Scott Woody and his colleagues did not go unnoticed. In 1913, the United States Congress approved a special pension of two thousand dollars for each family of the postal clerks who died on the Titanic.
More than ninety years later, in 2004, the post office building in Roxboro, Woody's home town, was officially named the “Oscar Scott Woody Post Office Building” in his honour. The designation was approved unanimously by Congress.
The story of his watch has since featured in numerous publications and exhibitions about the Titanic, highlighting the heroic role of the public services on board the ship.
The Watches of the Battleship Aquidabã – Exact Marks of a Naval Tragedy (1906)
On the night of 21 January 1906, a devastating explosion destroyed the Battleship Aquidabã, one of the most imposing vessels of the Brazilian Navy in the early 20th century. The ship was lying at anchor in Jacuecanga Bay, near Angra dos Reis, when a blast in the ammunition magazine caused her to sink suddenly. Two hundred and twelve men lost their lives in what would become one of the most traumatic episodes in Brazilian naval history.
Among the few objects recovered, three pocket watches played a unique role in reconstructing the facts. Their dials, stopped at the same time – 22:45 – gave a precise indication of the moment of the explosion. One of them belonged to Commander Santos Porto and would later be preserved as a testimony to the tragedy.
The Aquidabã: a symbol of the Brazilian Navy
The Aquidabã had been built in 1885 at the Samuda Brothers shipyard in London, commissioned by the Empire of Brazil. Classified as a "central-citadel ironclad", she had a displacement of 4,915 tonnes (the total weight of water a ship displaces when afloat) and was armed with heavy-calibre guns. During her operational career she took part in historic events such as the Naval Revolt (1893–1894), and was even fired upon and partially sunk by government forces. After being raised and modernised, she returned to active service.
In January 1906, she was anchored at Angra dos Reis for routine operations, with officers on board and a full crew. On board were the then Minister of the Navy, Admiral Júlio César de Noronha, and several senior naval figures. On the night of the disaster, the forward ammunition magazine exploded, destroying much of the hull and instantly killing hundreds of sailors.
The preserved instant: the watches stopped at 22:15
During the rescue operations, which lasted several days, three pocket watches were found among the officers' belongings. One belonged to Captain Santos Porto, another to Sub-Lieutenant Enéas Cadaval and the third to Admiral Calheiros. All three had stopped at exactly 22:15, the time of the explosion that sent the ship to the bottom.
These watches came to be regarded as material evidence of the exact moment of the tragedy.
The fact that three different movements, belonging to different officers, had stopped at the same time strengthened the chronological precision of the event.
The case was widely reported in the newspapers of the time and cited in later publications on the history of the Brazilian Navy.
Santos Porto's Watch and the Preservation of Memory
Santos Porto's watch, in particular, was preserved and is now held in the collection of the Naval Museum in Rio de Janeiro. The piece, whose metal case has been darkened by oxidation, has a visibly marked dial and hands frozen at 22:15. More than a technical instrument, this object came to symbolise dedication to service, sacrifice in peacetime and the fragility of human life in the face of technological unpredictability.
Although other personal effects were recovered – among them letters, pieces of uniform and navigational instruments – the watches gained special prominence for the way they crystallised the fatal moment. They became, in a sense, fragments of time held in suspension.
Repercussions and historical impact
The tragedy of the Aquidabã prompted reforms in ammunition storage and safety practices on board Brazilian military vessels. The disaster also caused deep public grief and led to military inquiries.
In the press and in official reports, the precision of the stopped watches was cited as a highly powerful symbolic element. Several newspapers of the time, such as O Paiz and Jornal do Brasil, described the watches as “silent markers of the instant of the catastrophe”.
The watches recovered from the Aquidabã are not merely objects of technical study. They are material testimonies to one of the most tragic episodes in Brazilian naval history. Their preservation in a museum allows the memory of the tragedy to be approached with rigour and sensitivity. By keeping their hands fixed at the exact time of the explosion, these small mechanisms recall, with precision and humanity, the price of military service in peacetime.
The Gold Watches of the Pulaski – Witnesses to a Forgotten Tragedy (1838)
On the night of 14 June 1838, the American steamship Pulaski was sailing calmly off the coast of North Carolina, bound for Baltimore. The ship, one of the most highly regarded packet steamers of the day, was carrying passengers from privileged backgrounds, public figures and wealthy merchants from the southern United States. However, at 11 pm, a catastrophic explosion in the starboard boiler ruptured the hull and sent the vessel to the bottom in less than an hour. Of the roughly 187 passengers and crew, 128 died. The disaster would remain forgotten for more than a century and a half — until four gold pocket watches resurfaced in 2018 from the wreck lying on the seabed.
The Steamship Pulaski and the Disaster
The Pulaski had been launched in 1837, built in New York to provide fast connections between Charleston, Savannah and Baltimore. Steam propulsion was at the time a symbol of modernity and safety, and the Pulaski stood out for her speed, elegant accommodation and renowned service.
Yet boiler safety systems still had their weaknesses. On 14 June 1838, during a night crossing, a failure in the starboard boiler caused a violent explosion. The force of the blast destroyed the central section of the ship, separating the bow from the stern. Many passengers died instantly; others were thrown into the sea or trapped in the wreckage.
The ship sank in about 45 minutes. Only 59 people survived, among them women and children who managed to climb onto floating debris. Among the dead were former congressman William B. Rochester and several prominent families.
The Rediscovery of the Wreck
For more than 180 years, the exact location of the wreck remained unknown. In 2018, after years of documentary and cartographic research, a team from Blue Water Ventures International, working with Endurance Exploration Group, located the wreck of the Pulaski some 40 nautical miles off the coast of North Carolina, at a depth of 33 metres.
The divers recovered hundreds of objects, including coins, metal parts, fittings, porcelain and personal items. Among them, four 18-carat gold pocket watches from British watchmaking workshops stood out.
One of the most notable examples had been made by the firm of S.I. Tobias & Co., of Liverpool, a house with a solid reputation among exporters of watches to the American market.
The Watch Stopped at 11:05
The Tobias watch, with its gold pair case, showed its hands stopped at exactly 11:05 — about five minutes after the officially recorded time of the boiler explosion.
The fact caught the attention of experts and the public alike, owing to the coincidence between the stopping of the movement and the moment of the tragedy.
Although there is no direct proof that the watch stopped because of the explosion, the visible damage to the movement and the precision of the time make the connection plausible. The piece became a physical symbol of the instant when time stood still for those on board.
Historical Value and Auction
The four recovered watches were restored and authenticated by experts. The Skinner auction house, in the United States, organised their public sale, with estimates of between 12,000 and 15,000 dollars per piece. The media attention the case attracted earned the Titanic of the 19th century nickname for the Pulaski, given the profile of its passengers and the sudden, devastating nature of the disaster.
The Tobias watch in particular attracted strong interest from museums and collectors. The case, dial and movement had remained surprisingly well preserved after more than 180 years on the seabed.
The recovery of the watches from the Pulaski restored to history a forgotten chapter of 19th-century steam navigation. These silent yet eloquent objects condense within them the drama of a summer night when technical progress and faith in the machine were suddenly submerged.
The watch stopped at 11:05 remains an exact mark of the collapse — not only of the ship, but of an era of technological optimism. Today, these watches belong to the maritime heritage of the United States and represent, on an intimate scale, the tangible memory of lives cut short.
The Divex Watch Recovered from the Wreck of HMS Hermes (1942)
In September 2017, diver Felician Fernando surfaced from the deep waters off Sri Lanka with something unexpected in his hand: a Divex diving watch, covered in salt and marine encrustations.
The discovery took place during a dive on the iconic wreck of HMS Hermes, the first purpose-built aircraft carrier in the history of the British Royal Navy, sunk by Japanese bombers in 1942.
Far from being a relic of the Second World War, the piece turned out to be a modern quartz model, still running and showing the correct date.
The find aroused interest not because of its market value, but because of its impressive resilience and the symbolism attached to it.
The Wreck of HMS Hermes
The HMS Hermes was built in 1919 and was the world's first purpose-designed aircraft carrier. In April 1942, while operating off the east coast of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft and sunk, with the loss of 307 sailors. Her wreck lies at a depth of 53 metres, accessible only to divers experienced in advanced techniques.
The site has since become a place of pilgrimage for military and civilian divers, with several commemorative operations carried out over the decades.
The Discovery of the Watch
About a month before the discovery, on 25 July, a group of British Royal Navy divers, together with colleagues from the Sri Lanka Navy, carried out a commemorative dive on the Hermes. During that dive, they placed a British naval ensign on the ship's hull in tribute to those who died in 1942.
It was in this context that a Sinhalese sergeant lost his watch, somewhere near the ship's stern.
During a later dive, Felician Fernando found the watch next to the upturned propellers. He put it in the pocket of his suit and finished the dive with the journalist and diver Jason Heaton.
The Divex Watch
The recovered example belongs to the Divex Professional 200m range, with a Seiko VX quartz movement, a crown at 4 o'clock and a vented rubber strap. The Divex brand, based in Aberdeen, Scotland, has for decades supplied diving equipment for commercial and military use, including limited-production technical watches.
Although it sold for little more than £80, the watch proved extremely robust: it kept working after weeks at a depth of 175 feet in salt water, with the dial still legible and the date correct.
The Mysterious Corrosion
The condition of the watch surprised the divers: despite only a month under water, the case showed extensive signs of galvanic corrosion.
This phenomenon occurs when dissimilar metals (such as steel and aluminium) are in direct contact within a conductive solution – in this case, seawater at 29°C. This reaction explains the salt built up around the watch's bezel.
Return to Its Owner
After the dive, Fernando contacted the Sri Lanka Navy's diving unit and confirmed that the watch belonged to Sergeant Munasinghe, who had lost it during a decompression stop. The object was returned through Fernando's son at the Trincomalee base, closing a brief but symbolic chapter in the story of the Hermes.
A Different Kind of Sunken Treasure
This episode involved no gold coins, safes or luxury watches. Instead, it was a moving tale of happy chance – a story that reinforces the idea that watches carry more than time: they hold memories.
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