THE 10 SURVIVORS OF THE TITANIC AND THEIR STORIES - HISTORY - 2025

The survivors of the titanic, now deceased, are those who could tell at the time the tragedy that took place on the ocean liner on the night of April 14-15, 1912. These testimonies have been portrayed in different books and films based on real events that They deal with what happened that night, the best known being the film directed by James Cameron, Titanic.

The RMS Titanic, known as the "ship of dreams" was the largest ship of its time and among its 2,207 passengers and crew, it carried the hope of hundreds of immigrants from around the world who went in search of a future to America.

Titanic under construction (1912).

The Titanic sailed from Southampton on April 10, 1912, sinking within 4 days of crossing the North Atlantic after colliding with an iceberg. Of the 2,207 people traveling on the ship, just over 700 survived. Most of them were women, according to the protocol followed when loading the lifeboats, "women and children first".

The RMS Carpathia was the ship that came to the rescue of the shipwrecked Titanic, counting 712 survivors. 1,495 passengers and crew died that night.

Next, I will tell you what happened to the last ten people who lived to tell what happened that fateful night of April 14, 1912 aboard the "ship of dreams."

The stories of the Titanic survivors

1- Beatrice Irene Sändström (1910-1995)

Beatrice Irene Sändström, was just under two years old when she embarked on board the Titanic. She was the first of the last survivors to die.

He was born on August 9, 1910 in San Francisco, California. His parents were Hjalmar Sandström and Agnes Charlotta Bengtsson. He also had a sister two years older than him, Margarite Rut Sandström.

Beatrice, had been visiting her maternal grandparents in Hultsjö, Sweden with her mother and older sister. The three of them set out on the journey back to the United States on the Titanic. They were traveling with a third-class passenger aboard the Titanic.

All three survived the tragic night of April 14, 1912, when they were rescued by boat number 13. They reached New York on April 18 on the Carpathia.

Beatrice, because of her young age when the ocean liner sank, did not remember anything about that night, only what others had told her. However, in later years, there was a time that she recognized that as a child she used to say: "Look, the moon is falling", maybe the rockets that were fired calling for help while the Titanic was sinking.

After the Titanic disaster, the Sandström family returned to Sweden, where they survived to the end of their days. Beatrice died on September 3, 1995 at the age of 85.

2- Eva Miriam Hart (1905-1996)

Eva Miriam Hart was born on January 31, 1905 in Ilford, a cosmopolitan town in London, England. Her parents were Benjamin Hart and Esther Bloomfield, with whom she traveled aboard the ocean liner.

Eva Hart was one of the most critical survivors of the Titanic's safety protocol, stressing that there were not enough lifeboats. Hart gave several interviews that can be heard in full on the BBC page.

In his memories, he recounts the impact of the shouts of the castaways, followed by an abysmal silence. Eva told how she lived the moment when the Titanic broke in half and sank.

Another aspect that most attracts the attention of Eva Hart's story are her mother's presentiments that a catastrophe was going to take place.

Eva and her mother were saved aboard boat number 14. They never saw Eva's father, Benjamin Hart again. Eva Hart died on February 14, 1996 of cancer at the age of 91.

3- Edith Eileen Haisman (1896-1997)

Edith Haisman, née Edith Brown, was the last survivor of the Titanic born in the 19th century. She was born on October 27, 1896 in Cape Town, South Africa. Her parents were Thomas William Solomon and Elizabeth Catherine Brown.

He was 15 years old when he boarded the Titanic, together with his parents, on his way to Seattle (Washington), where his father wanted to open a hotel. They were traveling with a second-class ticket.

His experience on the "ship of dreams" was collected in a biography he published two years before his death, in 1995, A Lifetime on the Titanic. Edith Haisman is the only victim of the sinking, of the last ten survivors, who was a teenager when she boarded the Titanic.

Edith and her mother were saved aboard lifeboat number 14, while her father stayed on the ship and was counted as deceased, although his body was never found.

In his memoirs, he tells how at first it was not thought that the collision with the iceberg had been so serious. She also tells as an anecdote, that in her lifeboat, there was a man who slipped in dressed as a woman. A scene that collects Titanic, the James Cameron film.

In 1917 she married Frederick Thankful Haisman, with whom she had ten children. Edith died on January 20, 1997 at the age of 100, in a residence in Southampton, as a result of pneumonia.

4- Louise Laroche (1910-1998)

Louise Laroche was born in Paris on July 2, 1910. She boarded the Titanic, about to turn two years old, with a second-class ticket, along with her parents Joseph and Juliette and her sister Simone.

Louise was rescued along with her mother and sister by the Carpathia, while her father, the engineer Joseph Philippe Lemercier Laroche died in the sinking. It is not known exactly in which boat they left the Titanic.

As with many of the victims, the reason Louise Laroche boarded the Titanic was entirely circumstantial.

The Laroche family lived in France. Louise's father Joseph planned to return to his native Haiti at the end of 1912, but he found out that his wife was pregnant and decided to speed up the trip so that the child was born in Haiti.

They were to travel on the SS France with a first-class ticket, given to them by Joseph's mother. However, they did not like the policy of the first cruise regarding children and decided to exchange the tickets for second class ones on board the RMS Titanic.

Another curious fact is that Louise, Simone and Joseph Laroche were the only passengers of the Titanic of black descent, at least that is how it appears in the official information.

Louise Laroche died on January 25, 1998 at the age of 87.

5- Eleanor Ileen Shuman (1910-1998)

Eleanor Shuman, Johnson when she was née, was 18 months old on the fateful night of April 14, 1912.

Daughter of the newspaper editor, Oskar Walter Johnson and Alice Wilhelmina Backberg, she boarded the Titanic with her mother and her brother Harold by chance, with a third-class passage.

Eleanor has a similar story to Beatrice's, as they both boarded the Titanic by chance, after a family visit. In the case of Ms. Shuman, in Finland. He was saved aboard the last boat that left the Titanic, according to Mrs. Shuman herself.

Although she remembered little of that tragic night because of her young age, Eleonor claimed to remember perfectly the screams and an avalanche of hands trying to reach her lifeboat.

This survivor was the only one that filmmaker James Cameron met during the filming of his movie about the ocean liner. She died of illness at a hospital near her home in Elgin, Illinois, on March 7, 1998.

6- Michel Marcel Navratil (1908-2001)

He is the only man on this list of the last survivors of the Titanic. He was born on June 12, 1908 in Nice, France and when he was only four years old, he embarked on the "ship of dreams."

Michel and his younger brother, Edmond, became known as the "orphans of the Titanic", as they were rescued in the D boat, the last successfully launched from the ship, without a guardian in charge.

Michel Marcel and his brother were traveling on board the ocean liner, kidnapped by their own father Michel Navratil, who wanted to seek a future in the United States, together with his children, hidden from his, then ex-wife, the Italian Marcelle Caretto. The couple divorced in early 1912, so they had only been apart for a few months.

Michel Navratil, Sr., died in the sinking, managing to save his children in the last boat of the Titanic. During the trip, Michel Navratil posed as a certain Louis M. Hoffman and nicknamed his children Lolo and Momon.

Michel Marcel Navratil died on January 30, 2001, at the age of 92.

7- Winnifred Vera Quick (1904-2002)

Winnifred was born in Plymouth, Devon (England) on January 23, 1904. His parents were Frederick Charles Quick and Jane Richards Quick. She also had a sister five years her junior, Phillys May, also a Titanic survivor.

Winnifred was traveling as a second-class passenger, with her mother and sister, to reunite with her father in Detroit, Michigan.

All three were saved in lifeboat number 11, one of the first to leave the ship, according to Winnifred's mother, Jane Quick, in a chronicle of April 20, 1912 published in the Detroit Journal.

In 1923 she married Alois Van Tongerloo, with whom she had five children. The Quicks' eldest daughter died on July 4, 2002 in East Lansing, Michigan at the age of 98.

8- Lillian Gertrud Asplund (1906-2006)

Lillian Gertrud Asplund, known as Lillian Asplund, was born on October 21, 1906 and was the last surviving American from the Titanic.

She was one of the descendants of the marriage formed by Carl and Selma Asplund. Lilian had four more siblings, including a twin brother, Carl Edgar, whom she lost that night of April 14.

The Asplund family was returning from visiting relatives in Sweden. Only Lillian, her mother and her little brother Felix Asplund were saved from the shipwreck.

The little Asplund never wanted to talk about the tragedy. One of Lillian Asplund's known memories is how she boarded boat number 15 through a window, which was later identified with the first-class deck, along with her mother and little brother. All of this while leaving more than half of her family behind.

Lillian and the survivors of her family had many financial problems after the sinking, as they lost most of their savings.

Her mother, Selma never got over the death of her husband and children. Lillian never married and took care of her mother until she died at 52 years of age. Neither did her brother, Felix Asplund.

Lillian Asplund passed away in Worcester at the age of 99.

9- Barbara Joyce West Dainton (1911-2007)

Barbara West was the one of the daughters of Edwy Arthur West and Ada Mary West. She was born on May 24, 1911 in Bournemouth, England.

Barbara boarded the Titanic with her parents and her older sister, Constance. Her mother was pregnant when she boarded the ship. The West family immigrated to Gainesville, Florida, in search of a new life.

They carried second-class tickets. In fact, Barbara was the last survivor to travel second class.

The median of the West, always refused to talk about what happened that night. What is known, is by her mother Ada. Barbara, her mother, and her sister were saved aboard boat number 10, while her father died and was never identified.

Mrs. Dainton died on October 16, 2007 at the age of 96.

10- Millvina Dean (1912-2009)

Millvina Dean was just a two-month-old baby when she embarked on the Titanic and became the last survivor of this tragedy. This fact made her one of the most media victims. She was born on February 2, 1912 in Devon, England.

Millvina was part of one of the migrant families aboard the Titanic. She was traveling with her parents and her older brother. Her father, like most of the men on the ship, died in the sinking.

The Dean family was among the first with third-class passage to get into a lifeboat. Millvina boarded boat number 10 with her mother and brother.

Like many other survivors, he had financial problems. It received donations from Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and James Cameron.

Millvina died on May 31, 2009 in Hampshire, England, from pneumonia.

References

1. Barbara Celis. (2006). Lillian Gertrud Asplund, survivor of the «Titanic». El País Website: elpais.com.
2. David Alandete. (2009). Millvina Dean, last survivor of the «Titanic». El País Website: elpais.com.
3. Encyclopedia Titanica. (2017). Titanic Survivors. Available at: encyclopedia-titanica.org.
4. Harvey Aranton. (2014). A Matchup of Unsinkable Spirits. New York Times Website: nytimes.com.
5. Radio 4. (1983). Today, Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor. BBC Website: bbc.co.uk.
6. Titanic Historical Society. (2017). Home of the first and original Titanic Society.Available at: titanichistoricalsociety.org.
7. Will Payne. (2008). Secrets of the Titanic survivor Lillian Asplund revealed. Mirror Website: mirror.co.uk.