THE Titanic’s links to Swindon and Wiltshire are being dusted off ahead of the 100th anniversary of the disaster.

The town’s Steam Museum has put on display long-lost documents relating to the ship’s doomed maiden voyage.

They include legal paperwork relating to Great Western Railway shareholder Christopher Head, who died in the disaster. The documents confirm his death in order for his shares in the company to be released.

Mr Head, a former mayor of Chelsea, was a first class passenger who vanished without trace at the age of 42.

He had made many sea journeys as he travelled to gain experience of shipping and insurance.

He boarded the ship at Southampton, paying £42.10s for ticket number 113038. He occupied cabin B-11.

The GWR received a letter from Lawrance, Webster, Messer & Nicholls law firm on May 10, 1912, confirming his death.

Another letter, dated September 18, 1910, is from the GWR’s district goods manager’s office in Liverpool to James Inglis at Paddington.

It confirms the building of the Titanic and her sister ship, Olympic.

The GWR was interested in the White Star Line’s new ships for commercial reasons and were probably hoping to provide the passenger transport to and from the proposed ports.

The GWR had been advertising with the company since the late 1890s.

The documents were only unearthed by the Kemble Drive museum two years ago after being donated to the old Swindon Railway Museum, in Faringdon Road, in 1993.

Steam collections officer Elaine Arthurs said: “Everyone knows the story of the ill-fated ship that sank on April 15, 1912, so when we discovered the documents with the word Titanic printed on them we took notice.”

Another artefact from the liner will be auctioned off tomorrow at the Devizes salerooms of Henry Aldridge and Son.

A menu, dated April 14, 1912, the night the liner sank, is expected to fetch more than £100,000.

The menu was on the table of first-class passenger Dr Washington Dodge, a prominent banker from San Francisco, who was travelling to America with his wife, Ruth, and his son Washington Junior.

Mrs Dodge slipped the menu into her handbag before carryingon with her day, unaware of what was to befall her.

She and her son survived the tragedy after being ushered onto a lifeboat and the menu, which had remained in the bag, has stayed in the family.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge, anauthority on the Titanic, said: “The sale will be 100 years to the day after Titanic was finished at Harland And Wolff.

“The star of the auction is one of the rarest items of Titanic memorabilia to be sold in recent years.

“Any menu from the Titanic is highly prized, but collectors will be offered the opportunity of a lifetime when a first-class menu from the last lunch ever held on board the Titanic goes under the auctioneer’s hammer.”

A commemorative £5 coin has also been released by Royal Mint to mark the centenary, showing Thane, the goddess of death, gazing at the ship as it sails across the Atlantic.

The Titanic was the largest passenger ship in the world when it began its maiden voyage on April 10, 1912.

About 1,500 lives were lost after the ship struck an iceberg shortly before midnight four days later.