Company wants to sell objects despite agreements to only display them at museums and traveling exhibitions

A plan to auction more than 100 artifacts salvaged from the wreckage of the Titanic – including personal belongings, currency, kitchen items and decor – is facing pushback from the US government, according to newly unsealed court documents.

RMS Titanic Inc, the company that owns exclusive salvage rights to the famous wreck deep in the North Atlantic, wants to sell the artifacts for the first time despite previous agreements to only display them at museums and traveling exhibitions.

Christine Dawood found herself trapped on the ship, waiting for signs that the Titan submersible carrying her family would surface. She talks in detail for the first time about those harrowing four days

Walking into Christine Dawood’s kitchen, it’s impossible not to be drawn to the model Titanic in the centre of the room. Sitting in its own glass-fronted cabinet, the Lego ship is almost 1.5 metres long, constructed of 9,090 of the iconic plastic bricks. Dawood’s 19-year-old son Suleman spent almost two weeks building it. “People are always a bit shocked to see it,” she admits. “But what was I going to do? Break it up? Hide it away? Suleman put all those hours in. He’d been fascinated with the Titanic since we went to a huge exhibition when we lived in Singapore.“

I went to that same exhibition when it came to London, and remember marvelling at the china dinner plates that had survived intact; the unused lifejackets that had failed to save someone; the sheet music belonging to the orchestra who had supposedly bravely played even as the ship went down. Instead of a ticket, you were given a replica boarding pass with a real passenger’s name on it. At the end, you could find out who survived and who didn’t.

St James Theatre, New York
The hilariously deranged riff on Titanic loses some scrappy charm in its Broadway transfer

According to its creators, the idea for Titaníque, the extremely campy Céline Dion jukebox musical now open on Broadway, originated as a drunken riff between friends – what if the Québécois Queen of Feelings not only sang the theme song of the movie Titanic, but sincerely believed she survived the disaster? A Céline-ified Titanic is an appropriately silly concept – possibly no one has provided the world as much camp sincerity as the 90s power ballad pioneer, and the beloved movie could use some unserious updates. Marla Mindelle, Constantine Rousouli and Tye Blue, the co-authors, made the show extra zany, extra gay, extra “kooky crazy” (to quote the truly inimitable Dion) and set sail in the theatrical equivalent of a rowboat; the first staging of Titaníque took place in the basement of a shuttered Manhattan grocery store. Adaptable and very meta, the show upgraded to a series of ever-larger craft: a buzzy, post-pandemic Off-Broadway run, a world tour, then an acclaimed West End stint.

Though, to my deep regret, I missed out on the original Off-Broadway run, I found myself nostalgic for those humble beginnings while attending the new-and-improved Titaníque at the too-cavernous St James Theater, where the jazzed-up show now has the budget and scale befitting an ocean liner. Or, more accurately, a corporate reality TV show; the tiered risers, on-stage band (who, it should be noted, sound great) and, most evocatively, neon-red stage lights look less like Titanic, even a very loosely interpreted one, and more like The X Factor, as Mindelle joked in one of her many asides as the singer. Why? Who’s to say. Self-awareness counts for a lot in the very funny Titaníque, though not an explanation.

Our grim fascination with the doomed ship shows no sign of abating – so here’s a four-parter which makes it feel like you’re onboard. A truly intense watch

April 2026 will mark 114 years since the night that the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg, but our grim fascination with the disaster shows no sign of abating. There was, of course, a surge of interest in the Titanic in the late 90s – thanks to James Cameron’s Oscar-bothering blockbuster – and there has been a steady stream of documentaries, dramas and podcasts about its demise ever since, some more sensitive than others (among the less tactful offerings: the 2010 film Titanic II – directed by Dick Van Dyke’s grandson Shane – a cash-in about a replica ship ravaged by a tsunami). Occasionally, the subject matter lurches starkly from the past back into the present. In June 2023, five people died on board an experimental submersible made by the company OceanGate; its passengers had hoped to see the liner’s rusting wreckage up close.

Titanic Sinks Tonight is a part-documentary, part-drama series playing across four nights, its episodes constructed from letters and diaries written by those on board, as well as interviews the survivors would give in the decades after. On the strength of the two episodes released for review, there’s no denying that it sates our appetite for Titanic-themed content. However, in centring the words and memories of those who lived through the terror of that night, it restores much-needed agency to those people. It also does well to bring a sense of reality to events that can sometimes feel unreal on account of their ubiquity, and that uncanny valley of Titanic-themed media. Central to its success is the presence of experts such as historian Suzannah Lipscomb and former Royal Navy admiral Lord West, to sharpen the corners of the story that Hollywood has sanded down.

As L’Atalante is re-released, we count down the best movies set largely on ships, boats, barges, yachts, steamers and trimarans. Submarines banned, as they’re under water

Stephen Sommers’ sci-fi horror pulp follows a bunch of scene-stealing character actors playing mercenaries hired to destroy the cruise ship Argonautica for insurance purposes. But a giant mutant octopus has got there first! Among the potential cephalopod fodder are Treat Williams, Kevin J O’Connor, and Famke Janssen as a jewel thief.

The 18-carat Jules Jurgensen gold watch belonged to Isidor Straus, who along with his wife lost his life when ship sank

A gold pocket watch that belonged to a man who died onboard the Titanic when it sank has sold for a record sum.

The watch, which belonged to 67-year-old Isidor Straus, went for £1.78m at auction, the highest amount ever paid for Titanic memorabilia. He was given the watch – an engraved 18-carat Jules Jurgensen – as a gift on his 43rd birthday in 1888.