Titanic first-class dinner menu expected to fetch P4.8 million in auction
A rare first-class dinner menu from the Titanic—the ill-fated luxury passenger liner that sank after hitting an iceberg and was depicted in the 1997 James Cameron movie—will be up for auction on Nov. 11.
The menu, dated April 11, 1912, is stained with water and has some of its lettering erased. It also has an embossed red White Star Line flag at the top. It was believed to have been found from the body of a Titanic victim.
Items included oysters, salmon with Hollandaise sauce, sirloin of beef, spring lamb, roast chicken, mallard duck, roast chicken, green peas, parsnip purée, boiled rice, and Victoria pudding.
The menu belonged to historian Len Stephenson from Nova Scotia, Canada, where all the bodies were taken after the tragedy. Stephenson died in 2017, and it was only recently that his daughter Mary Anita discovered the menu after going through his belongings.
Mary brought the menu to auction house Henry Aldridge and Son, and said in the lot description it is likely the menu ended up in the North Atlantic for a time when the Titanic sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912.
Andrew Aldridge, the auction house’s managing director, said: "Sadly, Len has taken the secret of how he acquired this menu to the grave with him. Len worked as a postmaster and when people came to the post office he talked to them and listened to their stories, collected old pictures and wrote letters for them."
He added that there are several dinner menus from the Titanic, as three meals a day were served from April 10, when the ship began its first voyage, to April 14, when it struck an iceberg that led to its sinking in the North Atlantic and killed over 1,500 people.
Aldridge said they consulted with museums with Titanic collections and top memorabilia collectors, and found there appears to be no other surviving examples of the menu dated April 11.
The first-class menu is expected to fetch up to £70,000 ($86,000; P4.8 million).
The auction will also include hundreds of items, including those from passengers, like a White Star Line tartan blanket that was recovered from a Titanic lifeboat and a pocket watch that belonged to a second-class passenger.