Titanic dinner menu for first-class passengers sells for $101K at auction

A rare menu from the RMS Titanic’s first-class restaurant sold for more than $101,000 in an auction held on Saturday.

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The evening dinner menu was sold by British auction house Henry Aldridge & Son Ltd. The final gavel price, including the buyer’s premium, was $101,600.

The menu from the doomed White Star Line ocean vessel listed oysters, beef, spring lamb with mint sauce and mallard duck, which were offered to passengers on the night of April 11, 1912, the BBC reported.

Other menu items feature squab à la godard and apricots bordaloue, according to a news release from the auction house.

The menu showed water stains, which was likely due to the massive ship’s sinking in the middle of the ocean.

“The menu is a remarkable survivor from the most famous ocean liner of all time,” auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said.

The Titanic sank four days into her maiden voyage from Southhampton, England, to New York City after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912. Approximately 1,500 passengers and crew members died out of a total of 2,200 on board the liner.

The menu bears an embossed White Star Line flag, the BBC reported. It also had evidence of water stains, as some of the menu’s text was partially erased.

“This would point to the menu having been subjected to the icy North Atlantic waters on the morning of April 15 either having left the ship with a survivor who was exposed to those cold sea waters or recovered on the person of one of those lost,” Aldridge said. “Having spoken to the leading collectors of Titanic memorabilia globally and consulted with numerous museums with Titanic collections, we can find no other surviving examples of a first-class April 11 dinner menu.”

The menu was found earlier this year among the personal belongings of a Canadian historian who lived in Nova Scotia, the news release stated. Recovery ships brought the remains of passengers who died to Nova Scotia.

The historian died in 2017, and family members found the menu inside a photo album from the 1960s, according to the news release.

Other items in the auction included a Swiss-made pocket watch, owned by second-class Titanic passenger, Sinai Kantor. It sold for approximately $118,700.

A first-class tartan-patterned deck blanket, which may have been used during the rescue of passengers, sold for $117,500.

Henry Aldridge & Son is noted for selling Titanic memorabilia, the BBC reported.

A fur coat owned by a first-class stewardess sold for approximately $184,000 in 2017. That same year, a letter written by passenger Oscar Holverson sold for more than $157,000, according to the news outlet.

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Titanic FILE PHOTO: On September 1, 1985, underwater explorer Robert Ballard located the world's most famous shipwreck. The Titanic lay largely intact at a depth of 12,000 feet off the coast of St. John's, Newfoundland. Using a small submersible craft, Ballard explored the wreck in 1986, taking a series of spectacular and haunting pictures and giving the world its first glimpse of the legendary ship in 73 years. (Ralph White/Getty Images)