“Titanic” Memorabilia Including First-Class Menu and Lifeboat Blanket Up for Auction
The auction by Henry Aldridge and Son Ltd. is scheduled to take place on Saturday
Pieces of memorabilia from the Titanic will soon have a new home.
British auction house Henry Aldridge and Son Ltd. announced it is auctioning off several items on Saturday belonging to passengers from the ill-fated ship, some of which came from the depths of the ocean following its 1912 sinking.
One of these items is a first-class menu dated April 11, approximately three days before the ocean liner sank. The menu appeared to be water-stained but still legible, showing several opulent offerings at the time, including entrées of “Salmon Hollandaise” and "Squab à la Godard" and dessert options like "Apricots Bordaloue" and “Victoria Pudding.”
The auction house noted after checking with museums with Titanic collections and speaking to Titanic memorabilia collectors that there were no other first-class menus found for the night of April 11, making it a rarity.
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The menu was discovered in a photo album belonging to Len Stephenson, a community historian who lived in Nova Scotia, Canada, by his daughter, according to a description of the item. Nova Scotia was notably where the bodies of the Titanic victims were taken after they were pulled from the water.
However, it is unknown how Stephenson came to acquire the item, with auctioneer Andrew Aldridge noting, “Sadly, Len has taken the secret of how he acquired this menu to the grave with him.”
The menu is expected to sell for between £50,000 and £70,000 (around $86,000), per the auction house.
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The items in the collection also include a Swiss-made open-face silver-on-brass watch from one of the passengers who did not survive the ill-fated ship’s journey, Sinai Kantor. He was a Russian immigrant who was a second-class passenger on the voyage on his way to America with his wife, Miriam. Kantor’s items were recovered from his body when he was pulled out of the ocean and sent to Miriam, who survived.
The watch features numerals that are Hebrew letters, and the back cover has a design of Moses holding the Ten Commandments, according to the item’s description. The auction house also noted that “the hands are nearly all deteriorated and the dial heavily stained” due to the watch’s immersion into the icy cold water, and the watch’s movement is also “heavily corroded.”
The watch is expected to sell for £50,000 to £80,000 — or nearly $100,000 — at auction.
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Finally, a blanket with the words “White Star Line,” which was used by one of the survivors in a lifeboat, is also up for auction. The auction house lauded it as “one of the rarest three dimensional objects we have seen.” It is expected to sell up to £100,000 or $123,000.
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