Menu for first meal served on Titanic sells for £100,000

A LUNCH menu of spring lamb and pastries that was the first meal served on the RMS Titanic has sold for £100,000 at auction.

The lunch – including sweetbreads – was served during the liner’s sea trials on April 2 in 1912, 12 days before the ship hit an iceberg.

The menu belonged to Second Officer Charles Lightoller, the most senior surviving officer from the Titanic, who died aged 78 in 1952.

He gave the menu to his wife as a souvenir before he left from Southampton on April 10 in 1912, four days before disaster struck.

Officer Lightoller, from Chorley, Lancs stayed on board the doomed ship until blown into the freezing sea by a rush of warm air as a boiler exploded. He clung to a capsized boat with 30 others until their rescue – 1,522 passengers and crew died.

Among other items under the hammer at auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Son in Devizes, Wilts, was a key to the doomed vessel’s chart room that sold for £78,000. A third class steward’s badge, which was worn by Thomas Mullin, fetched £57,000. The badge was found with his body.

In 2012 a menu of the first dinner served to first-class passengers on the Titanic on April 10 1912 sold for £46,000 at auction.