Millvina Dean has only 9 weeks when her parents go up on the RMS Titanic In third class, direction the United States. His British family was initially to travel on another boat, but a strike by coal minors redirects it to that of the British maritime company White Star Line. On April 14, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg. Millvina, her mother and brother manage to climb on a rescue canoe. Unfortunately, like many passengers, his father does not survive.
The youngest survivor of the disaster becomes a little celebrity, as the American online media traces Business Insider. Aboard the RMS Adriaticthe ship that brings his family back to England, the passengers crowd to take it in their arms. His success is such that an officer is forced to limit to ten minutes while she can spend in the arms of her admirers. It was not until the age of 8 that she discovered the history of Titanic; His mother, traumatized, never talked to him.
It was not until 1985, when the wreckage was found, that Millvina Dean agreed to speak publicly about the sinking, which she had not done until then. She participates in exhibitions, testifies in schools … but she always refuses to watch the legendary film by James Cameron, released in 1997. “Because it is the ship on which my father sank. Although I don’t remember him, nothing about him, I would still be moved. I would think, “How did he sink? He sank with the ship or he jumped over edge?” “she confides to the North Irish daily Belfast Telegraph in May 2009.
“I think it’s my father who saved usshe reveals in the columns of Los Angeles Times in 2002. So many other people thought that the Titanic would never flow and have not worried. My father did not take any risks. “
Hollywood at the rescue
In 2006, Millvina Dean was placed in a medical retirement home following a hip fracture. To cover its costs, it sells certain objects linked to the Titanicwhose suitcase that her mother had with her on board, sold for $ 18,650 (around 16,430 euros). A total of 53,906 dollars (47,487 euros) will be collected.
Don Mullan, a longtime friend of Millvina, appealed to stars and the director of the film Titanic. “I was delighted with the generosity they showed to take up this challenge”he declared to the Irish daily newspaper The Irish examine in 2009. Indeed, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and James Cameron responded by pouring him 30,000.Dollars (26,428 euros).
Millvina Dean will end up crossing the Atlantic ocean in liner, eighty-five years after the drama, by embarking on the Queen Elizabeth 2 To rally New York in 1997. She died in 2009, at the age of 97. His ashes are dispersed by his companion, Bruno Nordmanis, in the port of Southampton (south of England), the starting point of the Titanic.
