A FUR coat which helped keep a Hampshire woman warm in the aftermath of the Titanic disaster has been unearthed 105 years later – and is expected to sell for £80,000.

Mabel Bennett, a first class stewardess on the liner, grabbed the garment from her room before climbing into a lifeboat as the ship gradually sank in the Atlantic.

She wrapped up warm in it while she spent four hours waiting for the rescue ship the Carpathia.

Mabel, then aged 33, had the coat with her two weeks later when she was photographed wearing it while on board the SS Lapland, the ship that transported the surviving Titanic crew members back to England.

Mabel, from Eling, near Totton, kept the beaver lamb fur coat for the next 50 years until she gave it to her great niece because it became too heavy for her to wear.

The full-length brown coat has survived all this time and has been put up for auction for an estimated £80,000.

Experts have declared it an important artefact from the Titanic disaster as it has a direct link with the ill-fated liner as well as a personal attachment to a survivor.

A letter of provenance, that accompanies the size 12 coat, from Mabel’s great niece reads: “This coat was worn by my great aunt Mabel who was a stewardess.

“On her rescue from the Titanic she was in her nightdress and this coat was the first garment she snatched for warmth.”

The coat is made from lambskin made to look like expensive beaver fur.

The relative had the coat remodelled around the collar in the 1960s to give it a more contemporary style.

Andrew Aldridge, of auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Son of Devizes, who are selling the coat, said: “Mabel Bennett was a first class stewardess so would not have been wealthy which is why the coat is imitation fur and not mink.

“But it is extremely desirable and of great value today because it is the only piece of clothing that was worn by a crew member that exists.”

Mabel served as a steward on the Titanic alongside her brother-in-law, Alfred Crawford, and her nephew, Leonard Hoare.

After the ship struck an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912, she was one of 34 passengers and crew placed in lifeboat number five.

Alfred survived but Leonard died in the sinking aged 19. His body, if recovered, was never identified.

Mabel lived in the New Forest with her second husband. She outlived her daughter, also called Mabel, and died in 1974 aged 96.

She is believed to have been the last surviving female crew member.

Her old coat will be sold on April 22.