A rare postcard menu from a second class restaurant on the doomed liner Titanic — one of the only two of its kind to exist — is expected to fetch a staggering $135,000 at an auction.
The menu details the breakfast on offer on April 11, 1912 — just three days before the luxury liner struck an iceberg and sank in the Atlantic waters. The food on offer included fruit, boiled hominy, rolled oats, fresh fish, mashed potatoes, grilled ox kidneys and bacon, buckwheat cakes, maple syrup, marmalade, grilled sausage, tea, and coffee among other items.
On the flip-side of the menu, saloon steward Jacob Gibbon had written “Good voyage up to now” to his girlfriend — Miss L Payne — who was living in Studland Bay, Dorset, England. He posted the card after the ship stopped at Queenstown, Cork, Ireland, which has since been renamed Cobh.
While there are 20 menus from the Titanic still in existence, most are from the first class eatery for April 14.
This is because, with a higher percentage of first class passengers surviving the sinking, more menus were retained in their pockets as they scrambled for lifeboats, ‘New York Daily News’ reported. With 93 per cent of second class male passengers perishing, however, mementos from those decks were largely lost.
The menu will go under the hammer, alongside other Titanic memorabilia, at Henry Aldridge and Son auction house in Devizes, Wiltshire, on April 26.
