Titanic "Money Boat" Artifacts Auctioned

Lion Heart Autographs  held an auction of  items from passengers who fled the sinking Titanic on Lifeboat No.1 aka the “Money Boat” or the “Millionaire’s Boat”. Its passengers were accused of paying the crew not to go back and save others. Among the artifacts on the block were: a letter, a ticket from the ship’s Turkish baths, and a menu from the last lunch served on the boat. The ticket and menu were carried away on the lifeboat that night, and the letter was written six months later.

Lady Duff Gordon and her husband, Sir Cosmo, were real passengers aboard the Titanic—she was a famous fashion designer and he was a wealthy athlete. On the night the ship sank, the couple escaped with three other passengers and seven crew members on Lifeboat No.1, putting just 12 people in a boat capable of carrying 40.

Lady Duff Gordon was a famous fashion designer who escaped the Titanic aboard
Lifeboat No.1.
She and her husband were accused of bribing their lifeboat crew to not rescue others.

The lunch menu and Turkish bath ticket on auction were saved by one of the passengers, and the letter being auctioned was written by Lady Duff Gordon’s secretary, who was also on the lifeboat, about the “unjust inquiry” after the disaster. At a previous Titanic auction in 2012, the second-highest selling item, at roughly $75,000, was the kimono that Lady Duff Gordon escaped in on the Money Boat.

At the recent auction the lunch menu that was carried away on the Money Boat sold for $88,000. The Turkish bath ticket from the boat sold for $11,000, and the letter from Lady Duff Gordon’s secretary sold for $7,500.More here