There is something undeniably melancholy, perhaps even eerie, about Kate Odell's photograph of the Titanic steaming away from Queenstown in southern Ireland on April 11, 1912.

The silent and stark outline of her hull and funnels on top of the cold, grey Atlantic is a more memorable image of her ill-fated journey than any number of paintings, drawings and etchings of the terrible events four nights later when 1,500 people died after the ship hit an iceberg and sank.

Beautifully composed, it seems to sense that this would be the last time the ship, the biggest and certainly the most luxurious ever built, would be seen from land again.

The history of the photo and the Odell family came to light last week when the photograph and eight others taken by Kate Odell were sold at Christie's last week for £14,100 to a renowned American collector.

Kate, her sister-in-law Lily, Lily's two brothers Richard and Stanley May and Lily's 11-year-old son Jack, had taken the Titanic from Southampton to Queenstown.

The family, who came from Wimbledon, paid £24 for a joint first-class ticket on their way to a motoring trip in Ireland but the photographs taken by Kate, a keen amateur photographer with a good eye according to Christie's maritime expert Charles Miller, provide a fascinating insight into the doomed ship.

Three of the photographs show an extraordinary incident as the Titanic pulled out of Southampton, much reported the day after but forgotten in light of what followed, when the suction caused by its huge engines snapped the moorings of a much smaller liner, the SS New York, and pulled it across the bows of the great ship.

The Odells, on the first class deck with other horrified passengers, watched as the main propeller was used to push the New York away with the help of a tug, the Vulcan.

Mr Miller, who has valued Titanic memorabilia throughout his Christie's career, said he had never come across any photographs recording the potentially catastrophic accident, despite the presence of so many reporters on board.

"The incident was well recorded at the time, but it was amazing to come across photographs of the incident.

"I was never expecting that when we got the album," he said, adding the pictures would be a gem to Titanic enthusiasts and experts.

Other photographs contain revealing detail, much studied since by everyone from marine explorers like Bob Ballard, who discovered the wreck on the ocean floor in 1986, and James Cameron, director the 1998 film.

These include pictures of the Titanic's starboard side with its portholes, boarding doors and four life boats and a rare view of the compass platform and third and fourth funnels behind a posed family shot.

Another photo was taken by an Jesuit priest acquaintance they had met on board, Father Francis Browne.

But it is the haunting picture of the Titanic leaving the port which is the prize of the collection.

There is a considerable debate about whether it is in fact the last ever photograph of the ship (historians have since uncovered another photo of the ship dropping off its pilot three miles into its journey), but there is no doubting its iconicity.

The Titanic had anchored two miles off Roche's Point, near Queenstown, to bring aboard a handful of first and second class passengers.

But the vast majority of new passengers were the very poor, who had put their life savings into buying a one-way ticket to New York and a new life in America.

It was on one of the tenders which brought these people aboard and was taking the Odells back that Kate took her photo.

The family were met by a hired Star Landulette automobile in the city before starting a motoring trip around southern Ireland, where presumably they heard about the sinking of the Titanic, before returning to Wimbledon on April 19.

After attending a memorial service for the victims in St Paul's, Kate, acutely aware of the significance of her photos, gave them to young Jack in an album, while Lily preserved the earrings she wore on the trip, knowing they would one day be of interest to the family.

There is also evidence the pair kept in touch with Father Browne in the months after the disaster.

According to Mr Miller, Jack himself lived a very conventional life, carefully preserving his photos and allowing some to be reproduced for several publications, until he died in 1995, aged 95, the Titanic's last first class passenger.

Mr Miller says Jack's surviving family decided to sell both the album and earrings to genuine Titanic enthusiasts rather than keep them hidden for another generation.

Yet perhaps the most astonishing revelation is that Jack had no recollection of his brush with the doomed ship.

"As an old man his memory was fading and he said a few years before his death that he couldn't remember the holiday or the ship.

"It seems incredible to us that he couldn't."

Luckily the photos will live on.

May 30, 2003 15:30