The Remarkable Journey of Titanic’s Youngest Survivor: Living to 97 and Defiantly Declining James Cameron’s Film

Millvina Dean, aged a mere 9 weeks, embarked on the Titanic’s fateful journey in 1912, unknowingly becoming part of history. Her silence about the tragedy persisted until September 1, 1985, when the discovery of the wreck compelled her to share her story. Living a long life, she reached the age of 97, becoming the final living link to the ill-fated voyage upon her passing in 2009.

The fascination with the RMS Titanic and its ill-fated voyage has endured since the catastrophe of April 1912. The discovery of the wreckage on September 1, 1985, reignited public interest, shedding light on the stories of its passengers anew.

Among them was Millvina Dean, just a two-month-old infant when the ship met its tragic fate, emerging as its youngest survivor. Explore the extraordinary journey of Dean’s life, encompassing her service during World War II, her complex relationship with her unexpected fame, and her resolute decision to never watch “Titanic,” one of cinema’s highest-grossing films.

At a tender age of 9 weeks, Millvina Dean embarked on the Titanic’s voyage in 1912, accompanied by her parents and older brother.

Millvina Dean and her mother.Public domain

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, she was the youngest passenger aboard. She boarded the Titanic with her mother, Georgette, her father, Bertram Frank, and her brother, Bertram Vere, before the ship set sail from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912.

But she wasn’t supposed to be on the Titanic at all. The Dean family boarded the ship after a coal strike canceled their original trip.

The family was supposed to cross the Atlantic on a different White Star Line ship, according to the Los Angeles Times’ obituary of Dean. However, a coal strike led to the cancellation of their original voyage. The White Star Line offered them third-class tickets on the Titanic instead.

Her family was leaving the UK to move to Kansas City, Missouri, to join her father’s cousin.

The Deans were going to Missouri to be with her father’s cousin, who owned a store in Kansas City, according to Millvina Dean’s obituary in The New York Times. Her father was going to co-own the store after the Deans sold the pub they owned in England.

On April 14, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg and later sank. Dean, her mother, and 2-year-old brother survived, but her father died with the many other third-class men who weren’t allowed on lifeboats.

According to Dean, her father felt the ship collide with the iceberg, which might have saved his family’s lives.

“I think it was my father who saved us,” Dean said in 2002, according to the Los Angeles Times. “So many other people thought the Titanic would never sink, and they didn’t bother. My father didn’t take a chance.”

Dean, her mother, and brother were put on lifeboat 13, as reported by BBC News.

The survivors on lifeboats were later picked up by the RMS Carpathia and taken to New York City. But Dean’s father was among the more than 1,500 people who died in the tragedy.

Dean said she believed it was true that White Star Lines employees had prevented third-class passengers from going above deck and potentially escaping the sinking ship, The New York Times reported.

“It couldn’t happen nowadays, and it’s so wrong, so unjust. What do they say? ‘Judy O’Grady and the colonel’s lady are sisters under the skin.’ That’s the way it should have been that night, but it wasn’t,” she said.

When the Deans returned to England aboard the Adriatic, passengers lined up to hold the baby. The demand was so high an officer made a rule that each person could only hold her for 10 minutes.

Three weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, the RMS Adriatic took some survivors back to England. Dean, her mother, and brother were on board.

“Passengers who knew what the family had been through lined up to hold baby Millvina, the youngest survivor of the Titanic. To keep the line moving, a ship’s officer ordered that no one could hold the baby for more than 10 minutes,” wrote Mary Rourke of the Los Angeles Times in Dean’s obituary.

Dean didn’t learn about the true horrors of the Titanic until she was 8 years old when her mother finally told her.

“My mother would never speak of it, because it was her husband and they were only married four years. He was strikingly handsome. I didn’t know anything about it until I was 8 years old. And then my mother got married again. That’s when I first heard about the Titanic, and about my father going down, everything like that,” she told the Belfast Telegraph in 2009.

In another interview with the Irish Times, the Los Angeles Times reported, Dean said that her mother suffered severe headaches every day after the sinking.

Millvina and Bertram Dean were educated using money from the Titanic Relief Fund, a charity formed in England to support survivors.

The White Star Line rather infamously didn’t accept any liability for the Titanic’s sinking for years, even though the tragedy left almost all of its passengers with no money, no possessions, and in many cases, no breadwinner — many families lost their husbands and fathers since they couldn’t get on lifeboats.

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2003 that four years after the crash, the White Star Line agreed to pay the US $665,000, or roughly $430 per passenger.

In 2024, that’d be around $12,700 each.

During World War II, she worked in the British Army’s map-making office.

After the war, she worked as a secretary in an engineering office for 20 years, reported the Los Angeles Times.

She never publicly spoke about the Titanic until 1985, when the shipwreck was found.

“Nobody knew about me and the Titanic, to be honest, nobody took any interest, so I took no interest either,” she said, according to The New York Times. “But then they found the wreck, and after they found the wreck, they found me.”

For decades after, Millvina Dean attended many Titanic exhibitions, conventions, and events. She also traveled to different schools to tell her life’s story.

Dean never watched James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster “Titanic” because she was worried it would make her think about what her father had been doing in his final moments.

Even though Dean had said she didn’t feel a huge connection to her father, since she never really knew him, she couldn’t watch any movies or documentaries relating to the Titanic.

“Because that’s the ship on which my father went down. Although I didn’t remember him, nothing about him, I would still be emotional. I would think: ‘How did he go down? Did he go down with the ship or did he jump overboard?'” she told the Belfast Telegraph in May 2009, weeks before her death.

Her brother Bertram, pictured right, died on the 80th anniversary of the iceberg collision in 1992. He was 81.

Her mother lived to be 96, dying in 1975, according to The New York Times.

In 1997, Millvina Dean finally successfully crossed the Atlantic from Southampton to New York City aboard the Queen Elizabeth II.

Eighty-five years after the ill-fated maiden voyage of the Titanic, Dean finally completed the journey from Southampton to New York City, reported the Deseret News.

According to United Press International, after she arrived in NYC in August, she then journeyed to Kansas City to visit the neighborhood that would’ve been hers, if everything had gone to plan.

She auctioned off some of her Titanic memorabilia later in life, including the mailbag her mother carried their possessions in after the sinking.

After breaking her hip in 2006, Dean began living in a nursing home. To help with expenses, she auctioned off some items that had been with her family on the Titanic, including a suitcase that sold for $18,650. In total, she raised $53,906, according to NBC News.

James Cameron and “Titanic” stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio donated thousands of dollars toward Dean’s nursing-home costs in 2009.

Reuters reported that the trio behind “Titanic” donated $30,000 to Dean after her longtime friend Don Mullan challenged them to.

“I laid down the challenge to the ‘Titanic’ actors and directors to support the Millvina Fund and I was delighted with the generosity they have shown in meeting that challenge,” Mullan told the Irish Examiner in 2009.

Millvina Dean died in 2009 at 97. She was the last living survivor of the Titanic.