The Titanic's last luncheon menu is expected to fetch up to $US70,000 ($98,000) at auction, more than a century after first-class passengers aboard the ill-fated ship ate grilled mutton chops and custard pudding in an elaborate dining room.
The luxury cruise liner sank in the Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912 after striking an iceberg during its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York.
Yesterday marked 30 years since the wreckage of the ship, dubbed unsinkable, was discovered on the ocean floor by a team of researchers.
The luncheon menu will be auctioned on September 30 by Invaluable, a live online auction house, along with two other very rare and previously unknown artefacts — a letter written by one of the ship's survivors and a ticket from the unusual weight chair located in the ship's opulent Turkish baths.
David Lowenherz, owner of Lion Heart Autographs, the rare manuscripts dealer behind the auction, said only two or three other menus from the ship's last lunch are known to exist.
He estimated the menu at auction would sell for between $US50,000 ($70,249) and $US70,000 ($98,349).
"This is not an anonymous artefact from an anonymous survivor," Mr Lowenherz said.
"There's such a story behind the history of the boat and the people who were in it and how their lives were affected by the event."
The menu was saved by first-class passenger Abraham Lincoln Salomon and is signed on the back by Isaac Gerald Frauenthal, a passenger from New York who likely had eaten lunch with Salomon that day, Mr Lowenherz said.
Stamped with a date of April 14, 1912 and the White Star Line logo, the menu also included corned beef, mashed, fried and baked jacket potatoes, a buffet of fish, ham and beef, an apple meringue pastry, and a selection of eight cheeses.
The three artefacts were all recovered from passengers who survived the sinking on 'Lifeboat No. 1' which was lowered from the ship with just five passengers and seven crew members.
Nicknamed the 'The Money Boat' or 'The Millionaire's Boat', it became controversial amid accusations that the wealthy passengers onboard the lifeboat bribed the crew members to quickly row away from the sinking ship without trying to rescue anyone else.
Mabel Francatelli, one of the survivors onboard Lifeboat No. 1, is the author of the letter up for auction which she wrote on New York's Plaza Hotel stationary six months after the disaster.
The ticket from the weighing chair, a custom designed chair to record a person's weight located in the Turkish Baths' cooling room, also belonged to Salomon who survived the maritime disaster on Lifeboat No. 1.
Two of the other passengers on the 'The Money Boat', Scottish nobleman Cosmo Duff-Gordon and his wife Lucy Gordon-Duff, were the only passengers interrogated by the British Inquest into the sinking of the Titanic.
About 1,500 people died during the Titanic's sinking, and third-class passengers suffered the greatest loss.
Between 705 and 713 people survived the sinking of perhaps the most iconic ship in history.
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