Titanic menu goes for $88000

One of the few surviving menus from the last lunch served to first class passengers aboard the RMS Titanic before it sank 103 years ago sold at auction in the USA overnight for $125,000 ($US88,000).

The menu, which also lists savoury items like grilled mutton chops, salmon mayonnaise, and desserts including apple meringue is signed on the back in pencil by another first-class passenger, Isaac Gerald Frauenthal, who escaped on another lifeboat.

The menu, which went under the hammer on Wednesday, was described as:extremely rare: by online New York auctioneer Lion Heart Autographs.

These were a printed ticket from a weighing chair located in the ship’s Turkish baths, which sold for $11,000, and a letter to the man who was alleged to have paid off the lifeboat’s crew, which sold for $7,500.

Salomon, a stationer from Manhattan, died in 1959.

Salomon had the menu tucked inside his pocket when he boarded the infamous Lifeboat No 1 or “Money Boat”.

The Duff-Gordons were cleared by the British Wreck Commissioner’s inquiry, which decided they did not prevent the crew from attempting to rescue other people.

She wrote: ‘We do hope you have now quite recovered from the awful experience.

Lion Heart Autographs said the seller’s father was given the items by a descendant of one of the lifeboat survivors.

When food was served on the Titanic, meals often lasted up to five hours, serving up 13 courses of gourmet ingredients to wealthy diners.

This Titanic lunch menu that was auctioned off in New York City just the other day is dated April 14, 1912, the day before the vessel sunk after having collided with the iceberg. It carried just 12 and while accusations that one passenger, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon had bribed the sailors manning it to row away from the drowning people, the occupants were criticised in a subsequent inquiry for not trying to rescue more victims.