Violin of Titanic band found

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A violin, believed to have been played by the band onboard the ill-fated Titanic, has been found.

Tests are being carried out to establish if the musical instrument did belong to the bandmaster Wallace Hartley, Daily Mail reported.

Hartley and the rest of his eight-man band continued to play on, as the passenger liner began to sink after hitting an iceberg.

All of them perished in the 1912 tragedy and their instruments were thought to have been long lost at the bottom of the ocean.

The bodies of Hartley, violinist John Law Hume and bass player John Frederick Preston Clarke were pulled from the water by a search crew later.

It was reported then that the violin was strapped to Hartley's chest when he was found but there was no record of it.

RMS Titanic (Photo: AP)

Recently, an unnamed person living in UK claimed to own the violin, and said it was given to Hartley's fiancee, Maria Robinson, after the tragedy.

Among the supporting evidence is a 1912 diary where Robinson had apparently drafted a letter to the authorities, thanking them for acceding to her wish to have the violin sent to her.

Robinson died in 1939.

If the violin is put up for sale, it will smash the record for a Titanic artifact, currently set by the post office keys which went for £101,000 (RM482,468) in 2007.

The violin is currently being handled by Henry Aldridge and Son, which is considered the world’s leading authority on Titanic's artifacts.