A lunch menu from the Titanic will be auctioned on Sept. 30 by New York online auction house Lion Heart Autographs.
Saved by Abraham Lincoln Salomon, the lunch menu is estimated to fetch a price anywhere between $50,000 and $70,000. It lists cheeses, grilled mutton chops, roast beef and other sumptuous fare and is signed at the back by another passenger named Isaac Gerald Frauenthal. It is believed that Salomon and Frauenthal had met for lunch on the fateful day theTitanic sank in 1912.
A first-class passenger, Salomon is one of the few who boarded a lifeboat that would go on to be called the "Millionaire's Boat or the "Money Boat" based on unfounded rumors that one of the passengers on the boat bribed crew members to row the boat quickly to safety and not go back to rescue others.
Aside from the lunch menu, he also pocketed a printed ticket from the ship's Turkish baths, which record an individual's weight as they are seated on a specially crafted lounge chair. The ticket contains the names of three of the other passengers from first class that joined Salomon in Lifeboat 1. It is estimated to bring in between $7,500 and $10,000.
Written by Mabel Francatelli, a letter to Salomon will also be auctioned. Sent to him six months after the Titanic sank, the letter, written in stationery from the Plaza Hotel in New York, shows Francatelli wishing Salomon well and bemoaning the terrible treatment she received after returning from the tragedy.
Francatelli had returned with her employer Lucy Duff-Gordon, an aristocratic fashion designer, and her husband, Lord Cosmo Duff Gordon. It was Cosmo who was alleged to have bribed the crew to take the "Money Boat" away from the sinking ship when it could have saved tens more given the boat's 40-person capacity.
However, an inquiry from the British Wreck Commissioner cleared the Duff-Gordons, saying the couple did not prevent the crew from trying to rescue other people but could have helped save others had the boat turned around.
"I am afraid our nerves are still bad," wrote Francatelli, sharing that she and the Duff-Gordons had to deal with added trouble and anxiety after surviving the already harrowing experience with the ship sinking. Estimates for her letter peg auction prices at $4,000 to $6,000.
According to Lion Heart Autographs, the items to be auctioned were provided by the son of a man who received them from a direct descendant of one of the passengers aboard Lifeboat 1.
Photo: Les Chatfield | Flickr
