Jewels salvaged from Titanic to go on view

ATLANTA - Jewelry salvaged from the wreck of the Titanic will go on display later this week, the company that owns the artifacts announced on Monday.

The 15 items, including pendants, rings and a pocket watch, will first be exhibited in Atlanta from Nov 16 through Jan 6 and will be followed by displays in Orlando and Las Vegas, through May of next year, Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions Inc.  announced.

The jewelry includes diamonds, sapphires and pearls, said Alexandra Klingelhofer, vice president of collections for Atlanta-based RMS Titanic Inc., a subsidiary of Premier Exhibitions.

RMS was first to recover artifacts from the Titanic and has the legal right to anything salvaged there, Klingelhofer told Reuters.

Many of the jewelry pieces, recovered from the wreck in 1987, were found in a leather bag that had likely been in the care of a ship's purser, an employee responsible for handling money and other valuables, Klingelhofer said.

The purser likely removed the jewelry from a safe on the Titanic as the ship was sinking and placed them in leather bags so that he could return them to their owners after the rescue, she added.

"But there were no pursers that were rescued," Klingelhofer said.

The Titanic sank on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the north Atlantic Ocean.