• Pillow from Titanic lifeboat to be offered in rare auction
• Estimated price reaches £180,000 (around $220,000)

An upcoming public auction will feature a pillow taken from one of the lifeboats of the RMS Titanic, with estimates placing its value at £180,000 (approximately $220,000) during the sale scheduled for April 18.

The pillow bears an original lifeboat plaque featuring the White Star Line logo and was part of one of the 13 lifeboats that rescued passengers to the SS Carpathia.

Andrew Aldridge, an auction expert, described it as "an exceptional opportunity for a museum or collector, fully documented and from an actual Titanic lifeboat, which is unprecedented."

He added, "The pillow can be identified in a historic photograph of Lifeboat No. 2."

Originally, the pillow belonged to Richard William Smith, a London tea importer who perished on April 14, 1912, when the Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

Smith was en route to meet his colleague T.G. Matthews in Brooklyn, New York, and was among roughly 1,500 victims whose bodies were never identified.

According to Aldridge, Matthews purchased the pillow directly after the disaster from Meyer-Forest Corporation, a leading supplier of ship equipment, moved by the loss of his friend. The pillow remained in his office until it was passed to his grandson, George Matthews Byers, in 1926.

The pillow has been preserved in its original condition, with four intact brass eyelets, bears the original lifeboat plaque, and is displayed alongside an original ship rope and documentation verifying its authenticity.

It is now being sold by an anonymous owner, after Byers sold it in 1987.