I'm interested in buying a Titanic souvenir. What do you reckon

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A.� You're not going to get much unless you want to pay big money. For example, a passenger's gold-plated watch that stopped as the ship sank has just made �19,800.< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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The item was among 316 lots sold at the auction held as part of the British Titanic Society Convention at Southampton, Hampshire, which was marking the 90th anniversary of the tragedy.

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Q.� What was so special about this watch

A.� Its hands have remained at 3.21am, the exact moment witnesses said the vessel disappeared under the Atlantic Ocean on its maiden voyage in 1912. The watch was taken from the body of passenger John Gill, 24, a newly-married chauffeur, from Clevedon, Somerset, who had going to America on his own to start a new life when he died with 1,520 other people on 15 April.

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Q.� Anything a little more affordable

A.� Other items owned by Mr Gill included a pocket comb that went for �11,500. A first-class menu from 10 April, 1912, the first night out on the liner, made �27,000 - more than three times the amount for which a menu from the ship had previously sold.

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More macabre was a letter from White Star, Titanic’s operator, to Mr Gill's wife asking her to pay �20 for returning her husband's body. It sold for �5,500.

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Q.� What about items salvaged from the wreck

A.� This is where it gets a little more complicated. In America, a federal appeals court has just refused to allow a salvage company sell artefacts recovered from the Titanic's wreck.

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The ruling said that the company, RMS Titanic Inc, does not have title to the objects taken from the bottom of the sea. The company used a submersible to recover about 6,000 items since the wreck was discovered in 1985, from shards of glass and debris to part of the ship's wheel, passengers' belongings and the bronze base of a statue from the grand staircase.

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Q.� Background

A.� In 1994, after a long legal battle, US District Judge J Calvitt Clarke granted RMS Titanic the exclusive rights to bring up items from the wreck. Later, the company, claiming financial difficulties, wanted to begin selling some or all of the items.

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But Judge Clarke refused, saying he originally granted sole salver status to RMS Titanic because it promised it would make money only by displaying the artefacts at museums and travelling shows.

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Q.� And now

A.� Ninety years on, the doomed Titanic - the sip that couldn't sink - is still a source of constant fascination. Among the victims who died when the liner hit an iceberg nearly 400 miles south of Newfoundland were some of the world's richest people.

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James Cameron's Oscar-winning 1997 movie Titanic vividly presented how society at the time was divided into first, second and third class, with Leonardo DiCaprio's third-class character Jack Dawson violating convention by wooing Kate Winslet's first-class Rose DeWitt Bukater.

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Historian Don Lynch of the Titanic Historical Society said: 'This is a fascinating story. The biggest ship in the world with the richest people on board hits an iceberg. It goes down so slowly that a lot of drama - acts of heroism and cowardice - were played out. Nothing fictional could be so interesting.'

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Among those who died were Jacob Astor, Archibald W Butt, Benjamin Guggenheim and Isador Straus.

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Steve Cunningham

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