Titanic menu sells for £84,000 at UK auction

LONDON

A first-class dinner menu from the Titanic's ill-fated maiden voyage offering oysters, beef and mallard duck has sold for 84,000 pounds ($103,000), the U.K. auction house responsible for its sale said on Nov. 12.

The menu, for a meal served on April 11, 1912, is decorated with a red White Star Line burgee but the original gilt lettering is no longer visible.

More than 1,500 passengers and crew died when the vessel sank after hitting an iceberg on the evening of April 14, 1912.

The menu "shows signs of water immersion having been partially erased, the reverse of the menu also clearly displays further evidence of this," said auctioneer Andrew Aldridge.

"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," he added.

It is believed to be the only surviving copy of a first-class April 11 dinner menu and was discovered in a photo album belonging to late Canadian amateur historian Len Stephenson.

The menu was sold on Nov. 11 at Henry Aldridge & Son auction house in Wiltshire, south west England.

Other items in the sale included a Swiss-made pocket watch recovered from passenger Sinai Kantor, which sold for 97,000 pounds, while a tartan-patterned deck blanket likely used during the rescue operation fetched 96,000 pounds.