sole survivor

Yesterday morning, a 97 year-old British woman by the name of Millvina Dean died of pneumonia in a Southhampton nursing home.  She had lived a modest, quiet life as a resident in the nearby town of New Forest.  She never took a husband or bore children.  She attended secretarial school as a young woman and served as a mapmaker for the British Army during World War II.  Yet one fact ensured her place in the history books: at the time of her death yesterday, she was the last remaining survivor of the Titanic.

Dean’s mother carried eight week-old Millvina onto the decks of the doomed ocean liner on April 10, 1912.  Her mother Georgetta, aged 32, and father, Bertram, aged 27, boarded the ship as third-class passengers, bearing Millvina, and her brother, also Bertram, just shy of two years-old.  Dean’s young parents had recently sold their pub in London in hopes of venturing to New York, and from there traveling on to Kansas City to open a tobacco shop. 

In the dark hours after midnight on April 15, 1912, Betram was woken from his sleep by the impact of that fateful iceberg on the ship’s hull.  He hurried onto the vast upper deck of the Titanic, where he spied water gushing into the hull.  He rousted his wife and children, instructed them to dress warmly, and immediately delivered them to ship’s lifeboats.  They were separated from Millvina’s brother in the resulting chaos.  Per custom, Millvina’s father stayed aboard the Titanic.  He went down with the ship and perished in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

Once aboard the rescue vessel, Carpathia, Georgetta finally located her young son in the crowd.  They sailed among the other survivors to New York, where the trio spent several weeks recovering in a hospital before returning to England aboard the Adriatic.  Georgetta took the young children to live with her parents for a time.  She suffered frequent and mysterious headaches for years after the wreck.

According to her own testimonials, Millvina grew up hearing tales of the sinking, of that terrifying night on the water.  Only late in the life, however, did she go public with the full details of what she’d been told.  In the 1990’s Millvina became a staple at historical gatherings and Titanic events.  In 1998, a wealthy Titanic enthusiast invited her to sail once again from South Hampton to New York.  Millvina arrived safely to the eastern US, and then traveled to Kansas City, where she visited the small house that was to have become her family’s new home in 1912.

In recent years, Dean fell into poor health.  She auctioned off her Titanic mementos to pay for medical care.  When she became seriously ill, actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, stars of the film Titanic, heard of her circumstances and donated generously to provide top-notch medical care.  Oscar-winning director James Cameron donated $32,000 to the Millvina Fund, designed to buy back the memorabilia she’d sold in recent years. 

Dean’s death yesterday, falling on the ninety-eighth anniversary of the Titanic’s first launching in 1911, made headlines around the world.