Last Titanic Surviver dies on May 30, 2009

Millvina Dean was 2-months-old when she sailed on the ocean liner in 1912.

Millvina Dean, The last survivor of the legendary Titanic, which sank on its maiden voyage on the night of April 14, 1912 after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic, was 97 when she died.

Billed as "practically unsinkable" the ship hit an iceberg and sank in less than three hours.

Millvina Dean died at a nursing home near Southampton, England, the port where she and her family boarded the ship. Her death came on the 98th anniversary of the launching of the Titanic, on May 31, 1911. She was one of 706 people - mostly women and children - who survived.

"She was a remarkable, sparkling lady," said Charles Haas, the president of the Titanic International Society. "She knew her place in history and was always willing to share her story with others, especially children. She was the last living link to the story."

Dean and her family set sail, third class, on the luxury ocean liner on April 10, 1912. Five days later, she was rescued off the coast of Newfoundland. She and her mother, Georgetta, 32, and her brother Bertram, 23 months old, were put into lifeboats. Her father, Bertram, 27, stayed on board the ship and was among more than 1,500 passengers and crew members who went down with the Titanic.

She had no memory of the disaster, but at age 8 her mother told her what had happened. "It was so awful for her that she never wanted to speak about it," Dean said of her mother Georgetta, who suffered severe headaches every day for years after the ship's sinking.

When Bertram and Georgetta Dean sold the pub they owned in London, they planned to sail to New York City and continue on to Kansas City, Mo., where they were going to open a tobacco shop, and when a national coal strike led to a cancellation of their travel plans they were offered a place on the Titanic as an alternative.

On their fourth night at sea, the family was awakened by a jolt when the ship sideswiped the iceberg that cut into the ship and when Bertram Dean went to see what was wrong, he returned to tell his wife to dress the children warmly and to take them to the lifeboat deck.

"I think it was my father who saved us," Dean said in 2002. "So many other people thought the Titanic would never sink, and they didn't bother. My father didn't take a chance."

He reassured his wife, "I'll be along later," but the Titanic sank about 2:20 a.m. on April 15.

Dean's mother died in 1975, at 95. Her brother died in 1992 on the 80th anniversary of the ship's sinking. He was 81.