A MEMORIAL to the five postal workers who drowned in the Titanic disaster is to be given a new home in Southampton's Civic Centre.

The future of the monument had been in doubt amidst the relocation of Southampton's flagship High Street Post Office to WH Smith in Above Bar.

The Titanic Postal Workers' Memorial is part of the city's heritage trail and there were fears it could fall into the hands of collectors willing to pay tens of thousands of pounds.

City council bosses hatched a plan to keep the memorial in the city by making it a permanent attraction outside the council chamber in the Civic Centre.

Planning permission will have to be granted before the memorial can be installed.

The plaque was dedicated to Titanic postal workers - two Englishmen and three Americans - who desperately tried to haul 200 sacks of registered mail to safety on the upper decks.

It was made from a spare Titanic propeller donated by shipbuilder Harland and Wolff.

After the sinking, a Titanic survivor said: "I urged them to leave their work. They shook their heads and continued. It might have been an inrush of water later that cut off their escape, or it may have been the explosion. I saw them no more."