Did you know that Eccles has its own link to the tragic story of the Titanic?
The RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York on 15 April 1912 with the loss of 1,500 passengers and crew, making it one of the worst naval disaters in history.
Mr J.C.Spencer was born and brought up in Eccles before moving his family to Narrabeen, near Sydney in Australia.
Having worked on the immense task of building the 50,000 ton vessel in Belfast, Mr Spencer salvaged a rivet punching from the ship’s keel-plate setting it in mahogany left over when the fitting of the ship had been completed.
He decided to present the Titanic relic to Monks Hall Museum on Wellington Road, Eccles, where it was put on display.
Fragments from the doomed ship, Titanic have reached over £1 million recently in auctions, so how much would Mr Spencer’s donation make on the open market today?
Watch: Historic Monks Hall Museum uncovered
The article mentions that Monks Hall already had a piece of chain from the Great Eastern, a British steamship which was built in 1858 by famed engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel which sailed the seas for 37 years before being broken up in 1895 for scrap.
The item that Mr Spencer donated would have been moved to the safety of Salford Museum and Art Gallery when Monks Hall closed in the late 1980’s.
It’s thought the keel-plate could be one of the 100,000 historical object kept safely under lock and key in the vaults underneath the Salford museum.
We shall be making further enquiries about this fascinating maritime relic and hopefully we will be able to show it to you in the near future.
