Millvina Dean was just nine weeks old when she boarded the Titanic with her parents and brother in 1912 and experienced the most horrific shipwreck in history.
Millvina Dean, born February 2, 1912, was the youngest passenger on the Titanic that year. Millvina boarded the ship with her father Bertram Frank Dean, mother Georgette and brother Bertram Vere, before the ship departed from Southampton, England on April 10, 1912.
The Dean family was not supposed to be on the Titanic. The family of four had originally planned to cross the Atlantic on another White Star Line ship, but a strike forced the cancellation of the trip. White Star Line gave the Dean family third-class tickets on the Titanic.
She and her family plan to move to Kansas City, Missouri, to live with her uncle, who owns a store in Kansas City. Her father will co-manage the store, after the family sells the pub in England.
On March 14, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg, causing a historic shipwreck. Millvina, her mother and her 2-year-old brother were among the more than 700 survivors. Her father died along with many other men on board when they were not allowed to board a lifeboat. The accident killed more than 1,500 people.
Titanic during trials in Belfast Lough, Northern Ireland. Photo: Topical Press Agency
Millvina, her mother and brother were taken to lifeboat number 10, before being transferred to the RMS Carpathia and taken to New York. Three weeks after the Titanic sank, the RMS Adriatic took some of the survivors back to England. Millvina, her mother and brother were also on this trip.
Millvina became a celebrity on the Adriatic as the youngest survivor of the Titanic disaster. Passengers from first class lined up to hold the special baby girl. They even posed for pictures with Millvina, her mother and brother.
"A train staff member even had to ask that no one hold Millvina for more than 10 minutes," Mary Rourke of the LA Times once wrote.
"She was the star of the show, with women vying fiercely to hold and cuddle the little angel," Mirror wrote.
Millvina did not learn about the Titanic's horror story until she was eight years old. "My mother didn't talk about it, it happened four years after she and my father were married. I didn't know anything until I was eight. That's when I first heard about the Titanic, about my father dying and everything that happened," she said in 2009.
In an interview with the Irish Times , Millvina said that after the shipwreck, her mother suffered from severe headaches every day.
The White Star Line for years denied any responsibility for the sinking of the Titanic, even though the tragedy left many families penniless, without assets and without breadwinners. Four years after the accident, the company agreed to pay a total of $665,000, or $430 (equivalent to $11,000 in today’s dollars), in compensation to each of the victims.
Millvina and her brother Bertram were educated with money from the Titanic Relief Fund, a charity set up in Britain to help survivors. She attended Greggs School in Southampton.
Millvina never married. During World War II, Millvina worked in the British Army's mapping office. After the war, she worked as a secretary in an engineers' office for 20 years.
Millvina never spoke publicly about the Titanic until 1985, when the wreck was discovered. "Before that, no one cared about me. But after they found the wreck, the media focused on me," she said.
In the decades since, Millvina has attended numerous Titanic exhibitions, conferences, and events. She has also visited schools to tell her story. However, Millvina has never seen James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster Titanic .
"Because it was the ship that killed my father. Even though I don't remember him, I will still be heartbroken. Questions like how he spent his last moments, whether he jumped into the sea or sank with the ship will linger in my mind," she said in May 2009.
Her mother Millvina died in 1975 at the age of 96, while her brother Bertram died in 1992.
Ms. Millvina at a Titanic exhibition in Southampton, England in April 2002. Photo: AFP
In April 1996, Ms Millvina visited Belfast, where the Titanic was built, for the first time as a guest of honour at a conference of the Titanic Historical Society.
In 1997, Millvina was invited to board the QE2 from Southampton to America to complete the journey her family had been unable to make. Upon arriving in New York, she went to Kansas City, where her family had planned to move if not for the shipwreck.
After breaking her hip in 2006, Millvina began living in a nursing home. To help pay for her expenses, she auctioned off some of her family’s Titanic belongings, including a suitcase that sold for $18,650. She raised a total of $53,906.
Director James Cameron and Titanic stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio donated $30,000 to Millvina, after her longtime friend Don Mullan urged them to do so.
Millvina died in 2009 at the age of 97. Her ashes were scattered at Southampton docks, where the Titanic departed on its maiden and final voyage.
Thanh Tam (According to Insider )
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