Milvina Dean signs autographs in 1999.
Elizabeth Gladys ‘Millvina’ Dean, the last survivor of the Titanic disaster and the liner’s youngest passenger, died on 31 May 2009.
Dean spent her latter years living in retirement in Southampton. She kept herself busy by attending Titanic and other maritime-oriented events, appearing in movie and television documentaries, visiting with school groups and signing a massive number of autographs for fans worldwide.
Dean’s father died on Titanic; her mother passed away at 96 on 16 September 1975. Dean’s brother, also a Titanic passenger, died at age 81 on 14 April 1992, the 80th anniversary of the sinking.
Dean, along with her mother and brother, escaped Titanic with other steerage passengers on Lifeboat 13. With her husband dead, Dean’s mother abandoned the family’s plan of beginning a new life in America. The three survivors returned to England on White Star Line’s Adriatic (1907) in May 1912.
Dean died after a short illness at the age of 97. Her ashes were scattered from a small launch on the water near Berth 43/44 at Southampton Docks, where Titanic had departed on her maiden voyage 97 years earlier.
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