An unused life jacket from the doomed transatlantic cruise ship “Titanic,” which struck an iceberg in 1912 and sank, fetched 68,500 dollars at auction at Christie’s in New York late Wednesday.

The cork-filled life preserver - still largely intact, but stained and torn in parts - was thought to have been found by farmer John James Dunbar on the Halifax shoreline after the passenger ship sank off Newfoundland in April, 1912.

The liner sank during its maiden voyage from the British port of Southampton to New York when it hit an iceberg, causing some 1,500 people to die.