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Who Was Millvina Dean?
Millvina Dean was just nine weeks old when she boarded the RMS Titanic with her parents and older brother. Following the ship’s collision with an iceberg and subsequent sinking, she emerged as its youngest survivor. In the years that followed, Dean engaged in Titanic-related events as the wreckage was explored and studied. She lived to the age of 97, becoming the last surviving passenger of the tragic voyage.
Early Life
Elizabeth Gladys Dean was born February 2, 1912, in London. Her parents, Bertram and Georgetta (Ettie), decided to emigrate to Wichita, Kansas, where her father had family and friends and where they hoped to open a tobacco shop.The Deans, including Millvina’s older brother Bertram (born in 1910), was originally booked on another White Star liner, possibly the Adriatic. But due to a coal strike, they were offered passage on the maiden voyage of the much heralded luxury liner the Titanic. They boarded as third-class passengers at Southampton and set sail on April 10, 1912.
On the night of April 14, while sailing south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, Millvina’s mother and father felt the ship’s collision with an iceberg. Her father left the cabin to investigate and soon returned, telling his wife to dress their sleeping children and go up on deck.
Titanic Tragedy
Millvina Dean, along with her mother and brother, were among the first steerage passengers to be evacuated from the Titanic, boarding Lifeboat 10. After drifting in the water for some time, they were eventually rescued by the Carpathia, which had responded to the Titanic’s distress call. The survivors reached New York City safely on April 18.
In the aftermath of the disaster, it was determined that 705 individuals had survived. Tragically, Millvina’s father, Bertram Frank Dean, a 25-year-old, was among the 1,500 who perished. Like many other men on board, he remained on the ship and died when it sank early the following morning. His body, if recovered, was never identified.
Initially, Millvina’s mother had intended to continue to Kansas to fulfill her husband’s dream of starting a new life in America. However, faced with the challenges of raising two young children alone, she decided to return to England. After spending two weeks in a New York hospital, Millvina, her mother, and brother journeyed back to England aboard the Adriatic.
As a baby who had survived the Titanic sinking, Millvina drew considerable attention during the voyage on the Adriatic. Passengers eagerly lined up to hold her, and numerous photographs of her with her mother and brother were published in newspapers.
The Daily Mirror reported on May 12, 1912: “She was the pet of the liner during the voyage, and so keen was the rivalry between women to nurse this lovable mite of humanity that one of the officers decreed that first and second class passengers might hold her in turn for no more than 10 minutes.”
Life After the Wreck
Millvina Dean and her brother were largely supported through charity funds dedicated to survivors of the Titanic. It was not until she was eight years old, and her mother was preparing to remarry, that Dean discovered her own connection to the Titanic disaster.
Dean never married. During World War II, she contributed to the British government’s war effort by drawing maps. Subsequently, she worked in the purchasing department of a Southampton engineering firm until her retirement in 1972.
Dean gained a measure of fame due to her association with the Titanic. Initially, she was reluctant to embrace this notoriety, but in her later years, she began to acknowledge and engage with her part in Titanic history. She traveled extensively to participate in Titanic-related events and demonstrated her resilience and lack of fear of the sea by crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1997.
That same year, James Cameron’s Academy Award-winning film on the 1912 sinking, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, was released. Despite the film’s significance, Dean reportedly never watched it in its entirety, as her father had perished in the disaster.
In a poignant coincidence, her older brother passed away on April 14, 1992, exactly 80 years after the Titanic struck the iceberg.
Memories of the Titanic
At the age of 95, with the pain of her father’s death still vivid, Millvina Dean publicly criticized the BBC for what she perceived as a trivialization of the Titanic disaster during a Doctor Who Christmas special in December 2007. From her nursing home, she expressed her discontent, stating, “The Titanic was a tragedy that tore so many families apart. I lost my father, who rests on that wreck. It is disrespectful to turn such a tragedy into entertainment.”
Millvina Dean became the last living survivor of the Titanic on October 16, 2007, following the death of Barbara West Dainton in Truro, England, at the age of 96. The last American survivor, Lillian Gertrud Asplund, passed away in Massachusetts on May 6, 2006, at the age of 99.
Death
Millvina Dean, the last surviving passenger of the Titanic, passed away on May 31, 2009, at the age of 97. She died in a nursing home near Southampton, England. Remarkably, the date of her passing coincided with the 98th anniversary of the Titanic’s hull launch on May 31, 1911.