Last surviving cracker from Titanic sells for $23,000 at auction
DEVIZES, England - A cracker that survived the sinking of the world’s most famous “unsinkable” ship in 1912 sold for roughly $23,000 at a British auction. The cracker, or “biscuit” to Britons, is now the world’s most valuable.
It’s a Spillers and Bakers Pilot cracker that originated in a survival kit that was once aboard a Titanic lifeboat. Henry Aldridge & Son auction house in Devizes, England, sold the well-aged wafer to a Greek collector this week for the tidy sum of about £15,000.
Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge says the cracker has earned its nickname of “the world’s most valuable biscuit.”
Other items on the auction block and related to the ill-fated ocean liner included a photo of the iceberg responsible for the sinking of the Titanic, taken aboard a boat as it passed the site just hours after the vessel went down. That photo sold for about $32,250.
According to the English auctioneers, the cracker was preserved by James Fenwick, who was a passenger on the RMS Carpathia that aided in plucking survivors from the icy waters of the North Sea after the Titanic sank.
The cracker was kept in an envelope with a notation reading, “Pilot biscuit from Titanic lifeboat April 1912.” I guess you could say Fenwick almost kept his promise to "never let go."