I first met Millvina at her Residential Home in the New Forest, where a road near where she resided is named after her called 'Millvina Close'. There were two reasons for wanting to meet the last remaining Titanic survivor. The first was because I have, like so many other people had a fascination about the Titanic. Everything from the design and name of the ship, the facts surrounding the disaster, the conspiracy theories and the fact that Titanic was at the time, a ship that was deemed to be ‘unsinkable,’ and yet, the White Star Line’s finest achievement to build the largest, the most grand of all liners of it’s day sunk during it’s maiden voyage from Southampton to New York 100 years ago. I have lived most of my life only one mile from Chadwell Heath, where survivor Eva Hart lived until she died in 1996 aged 91. I had no idea at the time I was living so close to a Titanic survivor. A pub there is named after her. I have interviewed centenarians who can clearly remember the sinking of the Titanic and the reaction of the country at the time was said to be that of shock, disbelief and anger at the colossal loss of life due to an insufficient number of lifeboats which was a total disregard to passenger safety. This had a devastating effect around the world. Titanic was the worse maritime disaster in history.
The second reason, was that I was embarking on a personal photographic project entitled ‘Born Survivors’ documenting people who had survived major events in history.
It all started one sunny afternoon in Southampton, when I arrived early to interview a centenarian for my book, which coincidentally, will reviled some interesting and unknown facts surounding the Titanic, for example, the father of Lilian Doris Copper, John Stivey, was an officer for the White Star Line Company and was offered an officers position on board the Titanic. One evening in a pub, he told a friend who also worked for the White Star Line about the appointment, but was displeased. He decided to toss a coin for the post and lost the toss, her father lost the toss and his friend went instead. He had saved his life by the flip of a coin. He went on to become a commanding officer during the First World War, and was awarded a medal for bravery from King Edward VII (1901-1910) for saving 41 lives on board a burning ship. I decided to visit the Southampton Maritime Museum and was intrigued by their Titanic exhibition. It suddenly occurred to me that I was at the very place the Titanic was docked at White Star Dock, Southampton for her maiden voyage on 10th April 1912, in which 549 locals from Southampton lost their lives when the ship went down. The attendant of the Maritime Museum informed me that I had just missed Titanic survivor Millvina Dean, who had been there ten minutes earlier. I didn’t realise that a survivor was residing in Southampton, and it became a burning ambition to meet her.
Elizabeth Gladys Dean, better known as Millvina, was born February 2 1912 and was only 10 weeks old when the Titanic sank, the youngest of all the passengers onboard. Millvina, who lived in Southampton, where the ship set sail on her maiden voyage to New York, was the last living survivor of the Titanic. The Deans boarded the ship as third-class passengers heading for a new life in Kansas where her father Bertram Frank hoped to open a tobacconist shop. Millvina was barley two months old when she boarded at Southampton. Millvina’s father felt the ships collision with the iceberg on the night of April 14 1912, and after investigating, returned to his cabin telling his wife to dress the children and go up on deck. This would be the last time Mr and Mrs Dean would see each other. Millvina, her mother Georgette Eva, and brother Bertram were placed in Lifeboat 10 and were among the first steerage passengers to escape the sinking liner in which 1,517 soles perished. Her father, however, did not survive, and his body, if recovered, was never identified. Millvina’s brother, Bertram, died at the age of 81 on April 14 1992, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the disaster.
At the time, RMS Titanic was the most luxurious, most technically advanced and largest passenger liner in the world. She was dubbed ‘unsinkable’, but it took just two hours and 40 minutes to disappear into the icy waters of the Atlantic after striking an iceberg at 11:40 pm on April 14 1912.
Millvina was taken back to Southampton with her family after the disaster and did not find out that she had been on board until she was eight years old when her mother was planning to remarry. Dean worked for the government as a cartographer during World War II then worked for an engineering company. It was not until the Titanic was discovered in 1985 that she suddenly became a celebrity. Dean was invited to complete her ill-fated journey to the United States in 1997 aboard the QE2, and accepted, although she turned down an offer to attend the premier of the movie Titanic because it would be too upsetting. She also turned down a request to appear on a front cover of a magazine with David Beckham!
After Dean moved into a private nursing home, and after struggling to pay the bills of £3000 a month was forced to sell off some of her memorabilia including a sack from the ship that Millvina was wrapped in to keep warm when the Titanic was sinking.
At aucton in 2008 she raised £31,150 ($53,900), selling off rare prints of the liner signed by the artist as well as compensation letters sent to her mother by the Titanic Relief Fund. Dean was also forced to sell a 100-year-old suitcase filled with clothes donated to her family by the people of New York when they arrived on the Carpathia among the 705 survivors on board after being rescued.
In the wake of the auction, friends including members of the British Titanic Society and the Belfast Titanic Society, where the liner was built, set up a campaign to secure her future. Millvina sadly passed away 31 May 2009, but her memory lives on as we mark the 100th anniversary of the disaster. Among the donors to the Millvina Fund were Hollywood actors Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, who starred in the 1997 film “Titanic,” which is being rerelease in 3D.
Meeting Millvina was a pleasure and an encounter I will never forget. She was a very warm and endearing person who had an incredible passion for life. I will forever treasure my time photographing her, directing her in front of the camera to capture her personality, and she appreciated that I was using a roll film camera with a bellows to photograph her, as it reminded her of a camera she once used, which sadly became the last portrait taken of her.
Millvina was a delightful person to meet, and not just because she was the sole remaining survivor from the Titanic. ‘Feisty’ might be an appropriate term but she was more than that. She had a frank, open personality, and was clearly intelligent, had a lively sense of humour and a philosophical approach, ’What cannot be cured, has to be endured.’ I will also cherish my personally signed copy of her book Titanic, The Last Survivor.
A baby of 2 months at the time, Millvina, her near two year old brother and her mother, survived the disaster due to ‘Women and children first.’ Obviously she had no recollection of the tragedy, but said that her father was ‘gorgeous’. Millvina had little or no interest in the Titanic until the wreck was found in 1985 when suddenly the survivors became a subject of public interest.
Millvina said "The effect of this impact on the British nation in its day must have been similar to that felt in the U.S.A. after the destruction of the Twin Towers on ‘9/11.’ The Titanic was believed to be unsinkable just as the U.S.A. possibly felt it was impregnable on its home soil. Such is the vanity of mankind!"
After Millvina and her family returned back to England, they went to live with Millvina’s maternal grandparents on a farm where they stayed until Millvina was 8. During this time, a Vet was called in to look after a sick animal at the farm. He met Millvina’s mother and it was love at first sight! They married and went to live in his home, where there was obviously no lack of money. He had four spinster sisters, none of whom worked. Their only activity was embroidery.
Millvina didn’t have pets as she and her brother had the Surgery animals to play with. She recalls “One day a monkey took all the hairpins out of ‘Aunt’ Mabel’s hair, much to our amusement.”
Millvina’s mother was not prepared to accommodate the ongoing idleness of the four sisters. Before too long all four had left. Millvina, her mother and brother, appear to have had a happy home life together. Millvina herself kept busy on the farm with the animals although an Italian friend of her stepfather’s decided she should have a proper job at a local racing stables despite her limited shorthand and typing. During World War II, she worked at Chessington in the Ordnance Survey organisation which was under Army supervision despite her Boss’s attempts to keep her at the stable by telling them that she wasn’t any good at her job!
Although she has never married it is clear that Millvina did not lack for male companionship, including a friendship with an Australian soldier, who returned home in due course. She was very close to her maternal grandfather who insisted on her going to the Doctor as he was worried that she spent too much time reading. She was a voracious reader having learnt at the age of 4. She would read anything but particularly enjoyed adventure books and historical and romantic novels. She had an excellent memory which, if my meeting is anything to go by, she still retained to the very end.
Jayson Brinkler
