Mon Jun 1, 2009 10:14am IST
LONDON (Reuters) - The last survivor of the 1912 sinking of the
"Titanic," Millvina Dean, has died in a nursing home in England at
the age of 97, the Titanic International Society said on
Monday.
Dean was just nine weeks old when her family sold a pub they owned
in London to travel on the maiden voyage of the passenger liner and
begin a new life in Wichita, Kansas, in the United States, where
her father Bertram hoped to open a tobacconist shop.
Her father was one of the 1,517 people who died after the
supposedly unsinkable ship hit an iceberg in the Atlantic and
sank.
Dean, who was wrapped in a sack to protect her from the cold and
lowered into a lifeboat, was the youngest of the 706 Titanic
survivors. Her mother Georgetta and two-year-old brother Bertram
also survived, dying in 1975 and 1992 respectively.
Dean, who never married, said she had no memory of the disaster but
was told of the event at the age of eight when her mother was about
to remarry.
It wasn't until Dean was aged in her 70s that she became a Titanic
celebrity, appearing at conventions, exhibitions and in
documentaries and other media about the ill-fated ship.
The Titanic International Society said on its website that Dean
passed away in her sleep early Sunday at a nursing home near
Southampton. She was recently released from hospital after a bout
with pneumonia.
Last month the stars of the Hollywood blockbuster movie "Titanic"
-- Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and the film's director James
Cameron -- donated $30,000 to support Dean in her last years after
it was reported that she had resorted to selling her autograph to
pay her nursing home bills.
The 1997 drama "Titanic" made more than $1.8 billion at the
worldwide box office, making it the highest-grossing film of all
time in figures not adjusted for inflation.