Titanic survivor’s death leaves only 1 Millvina Dean

LONDON — Barbara West Dainton, believed to be one of the last two survivors from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, has died in England at age 96.
Dainton died Oct. 16 at a nursing home in Camborne, England, according to Peter Visick, a distant relative. Her funeral was held Monday at Truro Cathedral, Visick said Thursday.
Elizabeth Gladys “Millvina” Dean of Southampton, England, who was 2 months old at the time of the Titanic sinking, is now the disaster’s only remaining survivor, according to the Titanic Historical Society.
The last American survivor, Lillian Gertrud Asplund, died in Massachusetts last year at age 99.
Dainton, born in Bournemouth in southern England in 1911, was too young to remember the night when the huge liner hit an iceberg and sank in the Atlantic on April 15, 1912.
Dying that night were 1,500 people, including Dainton’s father, Edwy Arthur West, 36, who was leading his family toward a new life in Florida.
He waved farewell as the lifeboat carrying Barbara; her mother, Ada; and her sister, Constance, was lowered into the ocean, according to Karen Kamuda of the Titanic Historical Society in Indian Orchard, Mass. His body was never identified.
The Encyclopedia Titanica includes a photo of a plaque placed in West’s honor at the Truro Cathedral, noting that he “passed through the great waters” in the Titanic disaster.
The Titanic did not have enough lifeboats for all of the 2,200 passengers and crew. Only a small number of those unable to find a place on the boats survived the frigid waters.
Dainton returned to England and married in 1952.
She avoided publicity associated with the Titanic and even insisted that her funeral take place before any public announcement of her death, Kamuda said.
“We respected her privacy,” Kamuda said. “We’re so open with everything and our emotions nowadays, but people at that time, they just didn’t talk about it.”