She was unsinkable. That was the boast when the RMS Titanic, the largest passenger ship in service, set sail April 10, 1912, from Southampton, England, enroute to New York City. Four days into her maiden voyage, the unthinkable happened: the luxury ocean liner struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank.
Of the approximately 2,200 people on board, more than 1,500 lost their lives in the tragedy. The Titanic became the most famous shipwreck in history.
Courtesy The Print Collector/Getty Images
The catastrophe still haunts and intrigues historians and collectors alike. A first-class dinner menu from onboard the Titanic dated the night of April 11, 1912—just one day after the ill-fated ship set sail—sold at a U.K. auction house for a staggering $102,000 recently. It is the only known menu to exist from that day of the voyage. Most menus salvaged were dated from the evening of April 14, before the ship sank.
Courtesy of Henry Aldridge & Son.
The menu sold Nov. 11 at Henry Aldridge & Son, an auction house specializing in Titanic artifacts and memorabilia.
The sale also included a first-class tartan deck blanket recovered from one of the lifeboats, a pocket watch recovered from second-class passenger and shipwreck victim Sinai Kantor, a Russian immigrant traveling to the United States, and other historic items. The blanket sold for $117,000 and the watch sold for $119,000.
Courtesy of Henry Aldridge & Son
“The prices reflect the ongoing interest in the most famous liner of all time and the stories behind her passengers and crew,” Andrew A. Aldridge, the managing director of the auction house, said. “The menu offered a tangible link to the food that first-class passengers ate on April 11, 1912, and as a consequence is a unique piece of social history.”
Courtesy of Henry Aldridge & Son.
Heavily water-stained, with some of the lettering partly erased, the menu likely ended up in the North Atlantic for a time when the Titanic sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912.
Courtesy of Henry Aldridge & Son
The salvaged menu details the first dinner on board after the Titanic set sail from Queenstown, Belfast, and reveals the dining opulence the ship’s first-class passengers would have experienced. Dinner options included oysters, sirloin of beef with horseradish cream and pureed parsnips, with desserts including apricot Bordaloue — a type of tart — and Victoria pudding.
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