Titanic antique shop to shut after 50 years

In the heart of the city where the Titanic set sail from on its maiden voyage to New York, the owner of an antique shop is dusting off the cobwebs from its contents for one of the last times.

Peter Boyd-Smith, 78, opened the store on Northam Road in Southampton, Hampshire, 50 years ago and will stop trading in August.

Cobwebs has specialised in selling and trading ocean liner memorabilia since it opened in June 1975.

Mr Boyd-Smith told the BBC the shop had created many opportunities for him, including working on the Titanic blockbuster film.

Not only have RMS Titanic antiques featured in the shop, items from the Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth and QEII have also passed through.

Mr Boyd-Smith said getting involved with Titanic memorabilia was a coincidence.

"There was an auction in Liverpool and they were selling pieces from the Olympic, which was the Titanic's sister ship, and then people just started bringing stuff in," he said.

"People would come in with something and would say 'this belonged to my great uncle and it came off the ship'.

"The ship was in for a week and during that time people went onboard and took souvenirs, from menus and deck plans to china."

In 1994, Mr Boyd-Smith published a book about the Titanic and some of the memorabilia that has passed through Cobwebs, which he said led to him working with the team on James Cameron's 1997 film.

"I had a phone call from a guy and he said 'I'm Peter Lamont, I'm the producer of the James Bond films and I'm working on a film in America'," he said.

"He couldn't say what it was but he asked 'would I be able to help? It's connected with Titanic'. I said 'yes!'."

Mr Boyd-Smith said he had a chair from Titanic in the shop, which had been taken off and restored.

"That was used in one of the principle restaurant scenes," he said.

"This is the days before the internet, so we were getting faxes every single day for the best part of five, six months from the props department in California."

While researching for his book, Mr Boyd-Smith said he discovered some of his grandparents' friends had died in the disaster.

"When I was about 10, I found a postcard of the Titanic in one of my grandparents' postcards albums and I asked my granny what it was," he said.

"She said 'it was the Titanic, we will never ever talk about it' and I didn't think anything of it.

"When I was going through the book [later] I realised they had lost some of their friends on the Titanic."

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