Last Titanic survivor dies in England

LONDON – Millvina Dean, the last remaining survivor of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, has died in England aged 97, the British Titanic Society announced.

Elizabeth Gladys Dean, known to friends as Millvina, was only nine weeks old when the liner hit an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean on the night of April 14, 1912, and sank killing 1 500 people.
She survived after being bundled up in a sack and carried to safety. Her mother Georgette Eva and brother Bertram also made it, but her father, Bertram Frank, was among those who died.
British media reports said she died in a nursing home near Ashurst in the southern English county of Hampshire, but staff there refused to comment.
Dean’s family had boarded the Titanic at Southampton, heading for a new life in Kansas where her father hoped to open a tobacconist shop.
Born on February 12, 1912, she was the youngest passenger on board RMS Titanic, which at the time was the most luxurious, most technically advanced and largest passenger liner in the world. The vessel was dubbed ‘unsinkable’, but it took just two hours and 40 minutes for her to disappear into the icy waters of the Atlantic after striking an iceberg at 23h40 on April 14.
She told reporters that it was not until the wreckage of the liner was found in 1985 that she suddenly became a celebrity.
Dean was invited to complete her family’s ill-fated journey to the United States in 1997 aboard the QE2, and accepted.
However, she turned down an offer to attend the premier of the 1997 blockbuster movie ‘Titanic’ because it would be too upsetting. Dean moved into a private nursing home in Hampshire after breaking her hip three years ago, and after struggling to pay the bills was forced to sell off some of her memorabilia.
In October 2008 she raised 31 150 pounds auctioning items including a 100-year-old suitcase filled with clothes donated to her family by the people of New York when they arrived after being rescued.
– Nampa-AFP