How Much Was A Ticket On The Titanic? - Cruise Mummy

How much do you think a ticket on the Titanic cost?

It was the most luxurious ship in the world at the time, and a voyage across the Atlantic came with a price tag to match. Some passengers paid more for their cabin than many people earned in a year.

But when you adjust those prices for today’s money, the comparison with modern cruise fares gets really interesting. Were Titanic tickets outrageously expensive… or surprisingly similar to what we pay now?

Titanic Ticket Prices

Tickets to sail on the Titanic in 1912 cost from £7 for a Third Class ticket up to £870 for a First Class Suite. At today’s prices, that would equate to around £850 for Third Class to over £105,000 for the best First Class Suite.

What’s also interesting is how much the tickets cost in US dollars. The exchange rate between the Pound and the Dollar was much wider back in 1912 – you could get almost $5 to the pound. So, a Third Class ticket was $35 while the First Class Suite was over $4,000.

Here’s how Titanic ticket prices compare with today’s money:

Class	Price in 1912 (£)	Price in 1912 ($)	Price today (£)	Price today ($)
First Class Suite	£870	$4,350	£105,883	$133,132
First Class Berth	£30	$150	£3,651	$4,591
Second Class	£12	$60	£1,460	$1,834
Third Class	£7	$35	£852	$1,071

It’s estimated that there were 324 first-class passengers on board the Titanic’s maiden voyage when it sank, though it isn’t known how many of them took a standard first-class berth and how many took a suite.

There were 284 second-class passengers on board, and 709 third-class passengers (source). The Titanic was around half-full on her sailing.

So, if all the first-class passengers paid the £30 berth fare, then the total fare for all passengers would have been £18,091 ($87,922) in 1912, or just over £2.2 million ($2.75 million) in today’s money.

As a side note, White Star Line was sued for around £3.2 million ($16 million) in compensation by the survivors of the sinking, but the company only paid out £132,000 ($664,000).

That worked out at around £190 per person, or $950. In today’s money, that would be just over £23,000.

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The Most Expensive Ticket Bought…

While the most expensive suite on the Titanic would have cost around £870, that wasn’t occupied. The most expensive ticket purchased was believed to have cost around £512 ($2,560), approximately £60,000 ($75,000) today.

It is thought that the most expensive suite sold on the Titanic – with two bedrooms and a sitting room – was occupied by Charlotte Drake Cardeza, an American arts patron. She travelled with her 36-year-old son and their maid and valet. All survived the sinking of the ship, although they left behind 14 trunks of luggage as well as many other belongings.

The suite benefitted from its own private promenade deck which was 50-feet long -considerably larger than many of today’s suite balconies.

First-Class Tickets Explained

The Titanic first-class ticket price varied between £30 and £870, depending on whether passengers chose a first-class berth or a private suite. That equates to between £3,651 and £105,883 in today’s money. The most expensive first-class ticket actually bought is thought to have cost £512.

First-class rooms were decorated to the same standards as a high-class hotel, and there were a number of onboard facilities exclusively available to these guests.

These included a gym, a squash court, a swimming pool and a Turkish bath. Games like shuffleboard and chess were available to play on the deck.

The cost to use the Turkish Bath was 4 shillings or 1 dollar (approximately £60 in today’s money). The swimming pool was priced at 1 shilling or 25 cents (£15 today). Men could also swim for free between 6 am and 9 am.

Guests could choose to dine in the main dining room, which had tables for between two and eight guests.

All meals were served in this room, with dinner traditionally served between 7 and 8.15 pm. Alternatively, first-class guests could pay extra to dine in the à la carte restaurant.

Food for first-class passengers was typically high-class, including canapes, oysters, expensive meat dishes such as lamb and duckling, and varied cheese boards for dessert, along with French pastries. A lot of the menus were based on French cuisine, but some British and American options were included.

Here’s an example of a first-class lunch menu :

Second-Class Tickets Explained

A second-class ticket on the Titanic cost £12 (or $60), which is approximately £1,460 ($1,834) in today’s money. There were fewer second-class passengers travelling on the Titanic when she sank (284) than there were first-class passengers (324).

Second-class guests enjoyed a little more comfort than those in third class, with private cabins (although bathrooms were still shared). There was a library and a men-only smoking room, as well as promenade decks where guests could enjoy fresh air.

There was one second-class dining room that was large enough to accommodate all guests at once, and while menu options were more limited than in first class, there was still plenty of variety in the food available.

As an example, the last meal enjoyed by Titanic guests in second class included chicken curry, spring lamb or roast turkey for the main, while dessert options included cheese and biscuits, American ice cream and plum pudding.

Here’s a second-class dinner menu from the Titanic:

Third-Class Tickets Explained

A third-class ticket on the Titanic cost £7 ($35 at the time), the equivalent of around £852 in today’s money ($1,071). That price did include food as well as the accommodation cost. Titanic’s third class was considered to be as good as second class on similar ships of the time.

Wages at the time varied, but a skilled working-class man in England would likely have made around £100 per year, making the cost of a ticket on the Titanic around 7% of the annual salary. Many third-class travellers were sailing to America to start a new life there in the hopes of building their fortune.

On the Titanic, there were two dining rooms for third-class passengers, who also had outdoor deck space to enjoy, as well as communal rooms to enjoy. Third-class guests didn’t eat dinner, which was considered a reserve of the upper classes, but instead had tea and supper.

The food included fresh-baked bread, fruit and vegetables, along with meat and seafood, with many guests likely to have eaten better than they would normally have done at home.

Here’s a daily menu for third-class passengers on the Titanic:

At the time, many third-class passengers on other ships aside from the Titanic would have had to bring their own food with them.

There Were Rich People Onboard

The richest person on the Titanic was John Jacob Astor IV, an American businessman with a net worth at the time of around $87 million (equivalent to almost $2.5 billion today). He did not make it into a lifeboat and died when the ship sank.

Astor was sailing with his second wife, Madeleine Force Astor. She had fallen pregnant as the couple was travelling, and as they wanted the child to be born in the US, they bought tickets to sail on the Titanic.

Also in their travelling party were Astor’s valet Victor Robbins, Madeleine’s maid Rosalie Bidois and her nurse Caroline Louise Endres. They also had their dog, Kitty, with them. Madeleine, Rosalie and Caroline all made it onto a lifeboat and survived, but John, Victor and Kitty did not.

Astor was a very prominent businessman, to the point that one newspaper (the New York American) even broke the story of the Titanic sinking by almost dedicating the entire article to his loss of life, mentioning the other lives lost only at the end of the article.

Due to his notoriety, a lot of stories about his last moments on the Titanic were reported, including releasing all the onboard animals from the kennels and helping a boy get into a lifeboat. None of these can be substantiated, though, and most are expected to be exaggerations.

To Conclude

When you adjust the prices for inflation, a voyage on the Titanic wasn’t quite as wildly expensive as many people imagine.

In fact, the cost of travelling across the Atlantic in 1912 wasn’t all that different from booking a cruise today. A basic third-class ticket works out to roughly the price of a modern interior cabin, while the most luxurious suites would rival the cost of the best suites on today’s newest ships.

Of course, cruise ships today are far larger, far safer and packed with entertainment that Titanic passengers could never have imagined. But when it comes to the price of the ticket, the comparison is surprisingly close.

Suggested read: How Much Does a Cruise Cost?

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Check out my guide to Icon of the Seas vs Titanic for a full breakdown of accommodation, ticket prices, facilities and more.

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