While bits of the Olympic's elegant woodwork have turned up in hotels and offices all over England, none rival the restaurant paneling. Mahogany inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which had come from the first-class smoking lounge, languished until it was finally sold for firewood. There, some of its fixtures and fittings were sold off, but not all were snapped up. It became a troop ship during World War I and made 500 Atlantic crossings before it went to the breaker's yard in 1935. The Titanic was trying to beat the Olympic's trans-Atlantic time when it struck an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912, killing more than 1,500 passengers.Īfter the disaster, the Olympic was rebuilt to accommodate new safety features and more lifeboats. Parts were taken from the Titanic to repair the damage, delaying its completion. At the start of the Olympic's maiden voyage in 1911, a naval ship accidentally rammed into it and tore a hole in its side above the waterline. The White Star Line designed the ships to be bigger and more opulent than any that had come before. The Olympic and the Titanic were built side by side by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Northern Ireland. ''It is just wonderful quality, as all cruise-ship fittings were at that time.'' ''It would cost three or four times that to build it today,'' said James Rylands, the auctioneer. The estimated price of $135,000 to $250,000 is, according to the auction house, something of a wild guess. Norton said.Īll this commotion will end on May 19, when Sotheby's, Sussex, sells the paneling to a buyer willing to remove it from the apartment. ''We're occupied every day showing people the flat,'' Mrs. Norton said.Īmong them were Ken Marschall, a maritime illustrator and adviser on the hit movie ''Titanic,'' a ''coachload of Americans'' from the Titanic Historical Society, based in Indian Orchard, Mass., and countless visitors who have turned up unannounced. ''We've met so many lovely people only through discovering the a la carte restaurant,'' Mrs. ![]() The paneling, the picture indicated, appeared to be from the first-class a la carte restaurant of the Olympic, the sister ship of the Titanic, to which it was nearly identical in design and construction. His suspicion was confirmed when he found an old photograph at a maritime library in nearby Liverpool. ''It looked too ornate to be off a warship,'' he said. Norton's son, Glyn Samuel, a hairdresser who lives up the road, was curious. ![]() The paneling, they were told, had come off a German battleship. There, in the ground-floor flat of an unassuming Victorian house in Southport, a seaside town in the north of England, was Edwardian splendor: paneling of satin veneer in the living room, dining room and entrance hall, all ornamented with gold in the Louis XVI style. ''All we want now is a cozy little bungalow.''įourteen years ago, she and her husband, Fred, were shown the apartment in which they now live and were astonished by what they saw. ''PEOPLE think we're mad for selling it, but I'm getting too old to do the polishing,'' said Joy Norton, who is 75, referring to the lustrous walnut paneling that has changed her life.
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