Youngest Titanic Survivor, Now 85, Finally Makes Her Destination

The youngest survivor of the sinking of the Titanic has finally completed her journey - 85 years after setting out for Kansas City as a 9-week-old infant with her family.

“Kansas City is so lovely I could stay here five years,” Millvina Dean, a London resident, said Tuesday. “If I win a prize in the lottery, which I hope to do because I play every week, then I will be back.”

Dean arrived Sunday at the Kansas City house, owned by an uncle, for which she and her family were ultimately bound when they boarded the Titanic at Southampton, England, in April 1912.

Her father, who had sold his pub and planned to open a tobacconist’s shop in Kansas City, was among the 1,517 who died in the disaster. Dean, her mother and older brother survived and returned to England after two weeks in a New York hospital. They were among the more than 700 people who were rescued.

Dean, whose life was saved when a sailor on the Titanic wrapped her in a sack and lowered her into a lifeboat, this time crossed the Atlantic aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2. She was met upon arrival in New York last week by Kansas City businessman Michael Rudd, a member of the Titanic Historical Society, who arranged her five-day visit.

Dean has attended several Titanic conventions over the years but said she is not excited by the prospect of seeing the upcoming Titanic movie, a big-budget production expected this Christmas season.

“I’ll see half of the picture,” she said, smiling. “The first half.”