FIVE short sentences but they were scrawled on the back of a postcard bearing the details of the menu for the 2nd class saloon breakfast of April 11 which was sold for more than £3,000.

SS Titanic, April 11th 1912.

Nearing Queenstown.

Good voyage up to now.

Kind regards to all.

J W Gibbons.

Breakfast menu cards from the Titanic are extremely rare and this one, detailing as it did the boiled hominy and grilled ox kidneys and bacon on offer may be the sole one of its type in existence.

More interesting than this, even, was that the card was sent by a Titanic survivor, Jacob William Gibbons, and it was received by Miss L Payne of Studland Bay.

Jacob was a second-class saloon steward who was born in Charminster, near Dorchester, on October 10 1875. When he signed on the Titanic he was living in Studland and it was to there he cabled his family after the sinking with the message: “Saved, well, Daddy.”

Jacob was rescued from a lifeboat. Initially a telegram from the House of Commons suggested he had died but he sent the subsequent one himself confirming he had survived.

On his return, he told his story to the Bournemouth Echo.

He said: “The shock was very slight, and to this fact I attribute the great loss of life as many of those aboard must have gone to sleep again under the impression that nothing serious had happened.

"When I got up on deck the boats were being lowered away, but many of the passengers seemed to prefer sticking to the ship. I helped some of the passengers into boat No. 11, including two little children. Before doing this I had scanned the deck for others but could see nobody about.”

Mr. Gibbons, commenting on the obstinate way in which passengers would go back to their cabins for nick-nacks said : “I saw one lady covered in furs complaining that she had several more left behind. She had a mascot in the shape of a little pig which played a tune and she would not leave the ship until she had secured her treasure.

“We drew away from the Titanic in charge of Mr. Wheat, another steward, and when about half a mile away saw her sink. The cries of those onboard were terrible and I doubt whether the memory of them will ever leave me during my lifetime, it has been denied by many that the band was playing but it was doing so and the strains of ‘Nearer my God to Thee’ came clearly over the water with a solemnity so awful that words cannot express it.”

Mr. Gibbons mentioned a curious circumstance in connection with the iceberg that struck the Titanic.

The berg, he said, was seen early in the morning by a passenger who mistook it for a cloud.

In the aftermath of the accident, Mr Gibbons became a head gardener at Studland Bay House – then called Kya-Lami – owned by Sir Eustace Fiennes MP (for Banbury) at Studland and was married with five children when he joined the Titanic.

His wife, Lottie (nee Puckett) came from Tolpuddle and was related to James Hammett, one of the Martyrs.

Mr Gibbons’ granddaughter, Mrs Sue Stares, who lives in Swanage, said he joined the Titanic to help him recover from peritonitis.

After surviving the sinking, he went on the Canadian Pacific Railway and then served with the Red Cross in France in the Great War before returning to England.

He and Lottie later ran a guest house called Harbour View at Studland where the visitors’ book shows the Baden-Powells stayed.

He died in 1965 and his ashes were scattered by his youngest son, Arthur, in the graveyard of Studland Methodist Church.

“He was a lovely grandfather and we would often go to see him,” said Mrs Stares, who recalled that he was also a good cook.

Thirteen years ago, she arranged for a memorial plaque to be erected in Jacob’s memory on Studland Methodist Church. Now that is closed, the memorial stone has been moved to Studland churchyard, alongside that of his son, Arthur.