R.M.S. TITANIC: R.M.S. TITANIC: Titanic lookout Alfred Fran...

Hammer

£21,000

R.M.S. TITANIC:

R.M.S. TITANIC: Titanic lookout Alfred Francis Evans’s cut-throat razor, the razor is engraved with initials, ‘AFE’ (Alfred Francis Evans), with ‘RMS Oceanic 1911,’ and ‘White Star Line,’ on either side of its bone handle. Evans was a lookout on Titanic. A near-identical razor was owned by surviving steward F. Dent Ray and is in the Titanic Historical Society museum in Massachusetts.

United States Inquiry: Senator Smith: Did it alarm you seriously when it struck? Lookout Fred Fleet (first aboard to see the iceberg): No, sir; I thought it was a narrow shave. (p. 321 US Inquiry — day 4, Tuesday April 23, 1912.)

British Inquiry: (Br. Q. 17323)

17323. Did you have any conversation with your mate, Lee, after you struck?

Fleet - Well, I told him I thought it was a narrow shave.

Prior to joining Titanic, Evans served as able-bodied seaman aboard the Oceanic from October 1911 to March 1912, as verified by crew manifests for both ships in the UK National Archives. 25-year-old Evans was one of the last two men to descend the Titanic crow’s nest as the ship sank. On the night of the disaster, he and fellow lookout George Hogg relieved Fleet and Lee in the crow's nest at eight bells (12 a.m.), about 12.25 by run-on time, after the impact. The pair remained twenty minutes before being called down to the boat deck. Evans was reputedly rescued in Lifeboat 15. He seems to have suffered survivor guilt thereafter, refusing to ever discuss the sinking. Evans died in 1964, aged 76.