What will happen to Titanic plaque? (From Daily Echo)

What will happen to Titanic plaque?

11:48am Tuesday 9th October 2007

THE FUTURE of an important monument on Southampton's heritage trail has been thrown into doubt, the Daily Echo can reveal.

Plans by Royal Mail to shut the city's main post office means the Titanic Postal Workers Memorial has an uncertain fate.

City council bosses are already hatching a plan to keep the memorial in the city and save it falling into the hands of collectors willing to pay tens of thousands of pounds for anything related to the ill-fated liner.

A key to the Titanic binoculars store was recently sold for £90,000 at auction in Devizes, Wiltshire.

Royal Mail said it could relocate from its current High Street home to "another building in the group" for public display but could not say where that would be.

The High Street post office is closing in April to be moved inside WH Smith as part of a wave of new "crown post offices".

The memorial plaque was dedicated to Titanic's postal workers - two Englishmen and three Americans - who desperately tried to haul 200 sacks of registered mail to the upper decks hoping the post might be saved from the sinking ship.

It was made from a spare Titanic propeller donated by shipbuilder Harland and Wolff.

After the sinking, a Titanic survivor said: "I urged them to leave their work. They shook their heads and continued. It might have been an inrush of water later that cut off their escape, or it may have been the explosion. I saw them no more."

The plaque features on the Titanic tourist trail of the city and Dave Dilnot, Southamp-ton City Council's lead officer for Titanic, is adamant it should remain so.

"We are actively seeking negotiations with the Post Office to keep this important piece of Titanic history in Southampton," he said.

Post office workers say they would prefer to keep the plaque inhouse.

Ray Pearce from the Communication and Workers Union said: "I think it should remain with Royal Mail. It's part of our history."

He suggested displaying the plaque in the Southampton Mail Centre near the airport or even at the British Postal Museum in London.

A Royal Mail spokesman confirmed the Titanic Postal Workers Memorial had not been sold and that it had received no offers for it.

"We are in touch with the local council who have expressed an interest in the memorial," the spokesman said.

More than 500 Sotonians lost their lives when the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg off Newfoundland. A total of 1,522 people were lost.