Millvina Dean was the youngest passenger on RMS Titanic, just nine weeks old when she was wrapped in a sack and lowered from the sinking ship into a lifeboat bobbing on the frigid North Atlantic.
Dean lived to become the disaster's last survivor. She died Sunday at the age of 97 in Southampton, the English port from which her family sailed on the ill-fated liner, intending to begin a new life in the United States.
Dean's friend Gunter Babler said she died in her sleep at Woodlands Ridge Nursing Home early Sunday, the 98th anniversary of the launch of the ship that was billed as "practically unsinkable."
Irish writer Don Mullan, who befriended Dean and set up a fund to help pay her nursing-home bills, said she was "one of the most beautiful human beings that I ever met."
"Her secret for a happy life was a sense of humor and a kind heart and that's what you experienced when you met Millvina," he said.
Permalink | Linking Blogs | Digg this! | FARK It!
Filed under:
Obits, Titanic
Comments (2)
Sadly the Irish ship buildi... (Below threshold)1. Posted by Paul Hooson | June 3, 2009 4:31 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Sadly the Irish ship building company that built the Titanic violated some basic rules of metallurgy, leaving the ship's metal very fragile and easy to tear and sink the ship. Sadly, this poor workmanship cost many lives. This problem with defective ship building has been a subject of law websites for some time since more was known about the nature of why the ship broke apart so easily.
1. Posted by Paul Hooson | June 3, 2009 4:31 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on June 3, 2009 16:31
2. Posted by Damien wright | June 8, 2009 1:21 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
For me being only 21, I would have loved to met Millvina dean, for her to tell to me the story of the Titanic. For only months ago i read a suppliment in a daily news paper that she was unforinate to pay her nursing home bills. Ever since being a small child i have love the story of the ill fated ship, the Titanic. It has brought me hours of fasination and reseach, for both school projects and personal ones. I've enjoyed looking up information for remaining living sorvivours and the ship in general. But now Millvina Dean can finaly rest in peace with the many other passingers of the ill fated ship. I hope that the legacey of the Titanic and Millvina Dean will live on for many years to come, and that people will respect and honour both her and the other passingers and crew that went down with the ship, for we not, what may lye around the courner, and that we must live each day as it comes.
A small poem that i love and is just three simple lines.
The past is history,
The present is a gift,
but the future is a mystery,
2. Posted by Damien wright | June 8, 2009 1:21 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on June 8, 2009 01:21