By — Andrew Mach Andrew Mach Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/cracker-salvaged-titanic-sinking-auctioned-23000 Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Cracker salvaged from sinking Titanic auctioned for $23,000 World Nov 1, 2015 2:30 PM EDT A collector in Greece purchased what is likely ‘the most expensive biscuit ever sold’ — a cracker that survived the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic — for roughly $23,000 last week. This 103-year-old Titanic cracker just sold for $23,000. https://t.co/3PSLsyNBiV pic.twitter.com/Y9IS9ktuFZ — ForbesLife (@ForbesLife) November 1, 2015 The 103-year-old Spillers and Bakers “Pilot” biscuit was made from a simple recipe of flour and water and belonged to a survival kit from one of the doomed ocean liner’s lifeboats. James Fenwick, a passenger aboard the SS Carpathia when it went to rescue survivors from the sinking Titanic, claimed the cracker and saved it in an envelope, according to Henry Aldridge & Son, the U.K. auction house that sold the morsel. “Will the buyer take a bite out of the biscuit? I doubt it, it would be a most expensive nibble,” Henry Aldridge & Son auctioneer Andrew Aldridge told the state-run Xinhua News Agency in China. The 3.5-square-inch cracker was auctioned on October 24 and had been estimated to sell for $15,300 to $18,406. The auction house noted that the next-costliest biscuit ever sold was one from an Antarctic expedition. It fetched a price of $4,500. The auction included other Titanic artifacts, including a sterling silver cup that was presented to the captain of the Carpathia by Titanic-survivor Molly Brown (immortalized on Broadway and the silver screen in the ’60s musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown), which sold for $230,000, and a photo of the iceberg that purportedly sunk the Titanic sold for $32,000. We're not going anywhere. Stand up for truly independent, trusted news that you can count on! Donate now By — Andrew Mach Andrew Mach Andrew Mach is a former Digital Editor for PBS NewsHour in New York City, where he manages the online editorial direction of the national broadcast's weekend edition. Formerly, Mach was a news editor and staff writer for NBC News. He's also written for the Christian Science Monitor in Boston and had stints at ABC News, the Washington Post and German network ZDF in Berlin, in addition to reporting for an investigative journalism project in Phoenix. Mach was a recipient of the 2016 Kiplinger Fellowship, the 2015 RIAS German/American Exchange fellowship by the Radio Television Digital News Foundation and the 2012 Berlin Capital Program Fulbright. He attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is a native of Aberdeen, South Dakota. @andrewjmach
A collector in Greece purchased what is likely ‘the most expensive biscuit ever sold’ — a cracker that survived the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic — for roughly $23,000 last week. This 103-year-old Titanic cracker just sold for $23,000. https://t.co/3PSLsyNBiV pic.twitter.com/Y9IS9ktuFZ — ForbesLife (@ForbesLife) November 1, 2015 The 103-year-old Spillers and Bakers “Pilot” biscuit was made from a simple recipe of flour and water and belonged to a survival kit from one of the doomed ocean liner’s lifeboats. James Fenwick, a passenger aboard the SS Carpathia when it went to rescue survivors from the sinking Titanic, claimed the cracker and saved it in an envelope, according to Henry Aldridge & Son, the U.K. auction house that sold the morsel. “Will the buyer take a bite out of the biscuit? I doubt it, it would be a most expensive nibble,” Henry Aldridge & Son auctioneer Andrew Aldridge told the state-run Xinhua News Agency in China. The 3.5-square-inch cracker was auctioned on October 24 and had been estimated to sell for $15,300 to $18,406. The auction house noted that the next-costliest biscuit ever sold was one from an Antarctic expedition. It fetched a price of $4,500. The auction included other Titanic artifacts, including a sterling silver cup that was presented to the captain of the Carpathia by Titanic-survivor Molly Brown (immortalized on Broadway and the silver screen in the ’60s musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown), which sold for $230,000, and a photo of the iceberg that purportedly sunk the Titanic sold for $32,000. We're not going anywhere. Stand up for truly independent, trusted news that you can count on! Donate now