MILLVINA DEAN, the last survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, died yesterday at the age of 97.
Ms Dean, a nine-week-old baby at the time of the disaster, was the youngest passenger on board the ill-fated liner when it sank after striking an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912.
She boarded the Titanic in Southampton with her parents Bertram Frank and Georgette Eva, and her elder brother Bertram. The family was emigrating to Kansas at the time.
"They heard a tremor, a tremendous noise, and my father said: 'I'll go up on deck, see what's happening,'" Ms Dean recalled in an interview with the Irish Timeslast month.
“He came back and said: ‘Apparently the ship has struck an iceberg. Get the children on deck as quick as possible.’ I think that’s what saved us. So many people said the ship won’t sink, it’s unsinkable, but not my father – he wasnt taking a chance.”
As the ship sank, Ms Dean was placed in a postal sack and carried to safety.
Her mother and brother also survived, but her father was among the 1,500 passengers and crew who perished.
Ms Dean died in the early hours of Saturday morning at the Southampton nursing home where she had lived for some time.
In recent years, Ms Dean had struggled to pay the bills for the nursing home and she was forced to sell off several of her remaining Titanic mementoes.
Irish author Don Mullan persuaded the director and stars of the high-grossing Titanicmovie to help her out.
Director James Cameron donated $10,000 (€7,400), and actors Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio together contributed $20,000 (€14,800).
Ms Dean chose never to watch Titanic, or any other film about the stricken ship.
But her status as the final living link to the historic ship guaranteed years of attention. "If it hadn't been for Titanic, I would have just lived an ordinary life," she told The Irish Times.
“Once they found the wreck, and then they found me, I was able to travel all over the place, having the best of everything.”