Wiltshire

A dinner menu for first-class passengers onboard the RMS Titanic was sold for $103,000 (£84,000) at an auction. According to a report by the news agency AFP on Sunday (Nov 12), the menu was for a meal served on April 11, 1912. It is decorated with a red White Star Line burgee but the original gilt lettering is no longer visible. The menu was sold last Saturday at Henry Aldridge & Son auction house in Wiltshire, southwest England.

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AFP reported that this 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.

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

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said that the menu showed signs of water immersion having been partially erased, the reverse of the menu also clearly displays further evidence of this.

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"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 added.

Other items sold in the auction included a Swiss-made pocket watch recovered from passenger Sinai Kantor, which sold for $1,19,000 and a tartan-patterned deck blanket likely used during the rescue operation that fetched over $117,000.

(With inputs from agencies)