Since Titanic’s release in 1997, the youngest real-life survivor Millvina Dean refused to see it until she died at 97 in 2009. She never publicly spoke about the tragic incident which happened in 1912, until 1985 when the ill-fated ship’s wreckage was found. Dean was only nine weeks old when she got on the ship with her parents and older brother.
Although Dean and her family were not supposed to board the Titanic. However, they set sail from Southampton, England after a coal strike canceled their original trip. According to the Los Angeles Times obituary of Dean, they meant to cross the Atlantic on the White Star Line ship, which offered them third-class tickets on the Titanic instead.
The Titanic’s youngest survivor
After Dean’s father, Frank sold their family-owned pub in England, he decided to co-run a store with his cousin in Kansas City, Missouri, alongside his wife and two children. Sadly, their ship hit an iceberg and sank, leading Frank to his death as with many other third-class men who were refused lifeboats.
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Dean recalled in 2002 that she was grateful to her dad for being alive. Her father’s quest to safeguard his family came in handy after the ship hit the iceberg. Contrary to other passengers who dismissed the situation at first, thinking “the Titanic would never sink,” Frank could tell, that he planned ahead of time and “didn’t take a chance.”
Like Dean, her mother never spoke about the unfortunate incident for years, but she finally opened up when Dean was 8. The incident was traumatic for her mom as her marriage was just four years at the time the Titanic tragedy struck their family.
Dean, who received an education thanks to the Titanic Relief Fund, also revealed it was likely that the White Star Lines employees stopped third-class passengers from going above deck and escaping. “It couldn’t happen nowadays, and it’s so wrong, so unjust,” she bitterly recounted. Three weeks after losing her dad, Dean returned to England with her mother and brother alongside other survivors via the RMS Adriatic.