Titanic violin fetches £900k

This is the moment that auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Son sold a violin, believed to have been played on the Titanic, for £900,000.

Read: Titanic violin sold for £900,000 smashes auction record

Alan Aldridge, of auction house Henry Aldridge and Son, has said he does not think any other piece of Titanic memorabilia will raise as much as the violin sold today:

He said that with the addition of the buyer's premium and VAT, the final price would top £1 million.

Read: Titanic violin sold for £900,000 smashes auction record

The violin reputedly played by the Titanic's bandmaster as the ill-fated liner sank has been sold for a world record £900,000 at an auction in Wiltshire.

The previous record for a single piece of Titanic memorabilia stood at £220,000.

The violin reputedly played by the Titanic's bandmaster as the ill-fated vessel sank is the latest item recovered from the "unsinkable" ship to attract huge attention at auction.

Among the belongings on sale in Devizes, Wiltshire today, Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers will also offer:

• A photograph showing victims being buried at sea - The black and white image of bodies in sacks piled three high on deck was taken days after the tragedy and is expected to fetch up to £5,000

• A menu of the last meal served to first class passengers on board the Titanic sold for £76,000 at auction in March last year. The menu is dated April 14 1912
• A rare first class deck plan belonging to wealthy New York couple Ida and Isidor Straus, who drowned at sea, sold for £30,000 in October 2011

• The world record price for memorabilia from Titanic is believed to have been achieved when a plan of the doomed ship used in the 1912 inquiry was put up for auction. It was bought by a private collector for £220,000 in 2011
• A letter from a first-class passenger on the Titanic fetched £55,000 in 2010

A violin that the bandmaster played as the Titanic sank is due to go under the hammer today.

549 people from Southampton died in 1912 when the ship hit an iceberg and sank beneath the Atlantic. One of the most famous tales surrounding the Titanic is that the band leader played a violin as it sank. It is expected to fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds.