Last Titanic Survivor Dies at Age 97

The last Titanic survivor, Millvina Dean, died in her sleep today at the age of 97.

Dean’s friend Gunter Babler said Millvina Dean was found by staff members of the Woodlands Ridge Nursing Home in Southampton, Southern England. She had been hospitalized last week with pneumonia but had recovered and returned to the nursing home.

Babler, who is head of the Switzerland Titanic Society, said Dean was a “very good friend of very many years.”

The “practically unsinkable” Titanic hit an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. Dean was just over 2 months old and was one of 706 people who survived. Her father died that night along with 1,517 others. The ship sank in less than three hours.

Stars of the 1997 Titanic movie, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, along with the film’s director, James Cameron, had just this month contributed $30,000 to a fund for Dean. The stars came forward to help after learning the last Titanic survivor was struggling to pay her nursing home bills.