IN its original state it was worth just a pound or so and was actually given away for free.

Next month, though, this battered old deck chair is set to break records when it sells in New York for anything up to £60,000.

The reason for the massive increase in value? The chair is thought to be the last thing taken off the Titanic before she sunk after hitting an iceberg this very day - April 14 -in 1912 with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.

Irish photographer Thomas Barker removed the deckchair from the vessel when the ship called in at Queenstown in Cork for its final stop before setting off to cross the Atlantic.

Barker, who took the only pictures of passengers waiting to embark onto the Titanic, took the deckchair from the ship as a souvenir and then used it as a vantage point from which to take his pictures.

Although hundreds of deckchairs would have been built for first class passengers to use around the promenade deck of RMS Titanic, the chair to be sold by Bonhams & Butterfields in America next month is one of just six examples left in the world.

A spokesman for Bonhams & Butterfield, said: "Shortly before the ship's departure Barker asked Titanic officials if he could keep it as a souvenir and permission was granted.

"He had hoped to use the deckchair in his garden, but subsequent events changed his mind and he no longer wished to keep it.

"Barker gave the chair to his housekeeper Mrs O'Brien, whose family eventually brought it to England. A letter of provenance from 1959 will be sold with it."