DID the hat belong to a survivor or one of the men who never came back?
When Christchurch resident Victor La Breche visited an exhibition of Titanic artefacts in Canada, he spotted a trilby hat.
And the label showed it was “Manufactured by Peter Bennett, Commercial Road, Bournemouth”.
Mr Bennett had been a hatter, hosier and pyjama maker at what today would be a shop opposite H&M and he was trading there in 1905 though the shop was gone 10 years later.
Did he sell the hat to a crewman shortly to set sail on the Titanic? Or a passenger? We will never know.
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