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Last survivor of Titanic disaster dies aged 97
Source: Agencies |
June 2, 2009, Tuesday
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MILLVINA Dean, who as a baby was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat in the frigid North Atlantic, has died, having been the last survivor of 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic.
She was 97 years old, and she died where she had lived - in Southampton, England, the city her family had tried to leave behind when it took the ship's ill-fated maiden voyage, bound for the United States.
She died in her sleep early Sunday, her friend Gunter Babler told the Associated Press. It was the 98th anniversary of the launch of the ship that was billed as "practically unsinkable."
Babler said Dean's longtime companion, Bruno Nordmanis, called him in Switzerland to say staff at Woodlands Ridge Nursing Home in Southampton discovered Dean in her room on Sunday morning. He said she had been hospitalized with pneumonia last week but had recovered and returned to the home.
Dean was just over two months old when the Titanic hit an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. The ship sank in less than three hours.
Dean was one of 706 people - mostly women and children - who survived. Her father was among the 1,517 who died.
Babler, who is head of the Switzerland Titanic Society, said Dean was a "very good friend of very many years."
"I met her through the Titanic Society but she became a friend and I went to see her every month or so," he said.
The pride of the White Star line, the Titanic had a mahogany-paneled smoking room, a swimming pool and a squash court. But it did not have enough lifeboats for all of its 2,200 passengers and crew.
Dean's family were steerage passengers setting out from the English port of Southampton for a new life in the US. Her father had sold his pub and hoped to open a tobacconists' shop in Kansas City, Missouri, where his wife had relatives.
Initially scheduled to travel on another ship, the family was transferred to the Titanic because of a coal strike. Four days out of port and about 600 kilometers southeast of Newfoundland, the ship hit an iceberg. The impact buckled the hull and sent sea water pouring into six of its supposedly watertight compartments.
Dean said her father's quick actions saved his family. He felt the ship scrape the iceberg and hustled the family out of its third-class quarters and toward the lifeboat that would take them to safety.
"That's partly what saved us - because he was so quick. Some people thought the ship was unsinkable," Dean told the BBC in 1998.
Wrapped in a sack against the Atlantic chill, Dean was lowered into a lifeboat. Her two-year-old brother Bertram and her mother Georgette also survived.
"She said goodbye to my father and he said he'd be along later," Dean said in 2002. "I was put into lifeboat 13. It was a bitterly cold night and eventually we were picked up by the Carpathia."
The family was taken to New York, then returned to England with other survivors aboard the rescue ship Adriatic.
Born in London on February 2, 1912, Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean spent most of her life in the town of Southampton, Titanic's home port. She never married, and worked as a secretary, retiring in 1972 from an engineering firm.
She was 97 years old, and she died where she had lived - in Southampton, England, the city her family had tried to leave behind when it took the ship's ill-fated maiden voyage, bound for the United States.
She died in her sleep early Sunday, her friend Gunter Babler told the Associated Press. It was the 98th anniversary of the launch of the ship that was billed as "practically unsinkable."
Babler said Dean's longtime companion, Bruno Nordmanis, called him in Switzerland to say staff at Woodlands Ridge Nursing Home in Southampton discovered Dean in her room on Sunday morning. He said she had been hospitalized with pneumonia last week but had recovered and returned to the home.
Dean was just over two months old when the Titanic hit an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. The ship sank in less than three hours.
Dean was one of 706 people - mostly women and children - who survived. Her father was among the 1,517 who died.
Babler, who is head of the Switzerland Titanic Society, said Dean was a "very good friend of very many years."
"I met her through the Titanic Society but she became a friend and I went to see her every month or so," he said.
The pride of the White Star line, the Titanic had a mahogany-paneled smoking room, a swimming pool and a squash court. But it did not have enough lifeboats for all of its 2,200 passengers and crew.
Dean's family were steerage passengers setting out from the English port of Southampton for a new life in the US. Her father had sold his pub and hoped to open a tobacconists' shop in Kansas City, Missouri, where his wife had relatives.
Initially scheduled to travel on another ship, the family was transferred to the Titanic because of a coal strike. Four days out of port and about 600 kilometers southeast of Newfoundland, the ship hit an iceberg. The impact buckled the hull and sent sea water pouring into six of its supposedly watertight compartments.
Dean said her father's quick actions saved his family. He felt the ship scrape the iceberg and hustled the family out of its third-class quarters and toward the lifeboat that would take them to safety.
"That's partly what saved us - because he was so quick. Some people thought the ship was unsinkable," Dean told the BBC in 1998.
Wrapped in a sack against the Atlantic chill, Dean was lowered into a lifeboat. Her two-year-old brother Bertram and her mother Georgette also survived.
"She said goodbye to my father and he said he'd be along later," Dean said in 2002. "I was put into lifeboat 13. It was a bitterly cold night and eventually we were picked up by the Carpathia."
The family was taken to New York, then returned to England with other survivors aboard the rescue ship Adriatic.
Born in London on February 2, 1912, Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean spent most of her life in the town of Southampton, Titanic's home port. She never married, and worked as a secretary, retiring in 1972 from an engineering firm.
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