TheTitanic,: An Atlantic Nightmare

Barbara West Dainton, age ninety-five, and Millvina Dean, also age ninety-five are holders of a record neither would have wanted if they had been old enough to know what would happen on that Sunday, April 15th, 1912.

Barbara Dainton was ten months and two days old and Millvina Dean was just ten weeks old when an iceberg tore through the hull of the Titanic, "the unsinkable Titanic". They are the last living survivors of a horror they were thankfully too young to remember.

Ninety-four percent of the women and children aboard were saved. But the statistics of the dead are more horrific. To this day there is no clear number of dead. So great was the tragedy that there will never be an accounting of that Sunday night and Monday morning in the mid-Atlantic. Titanic was built in Belfast, Ireland and its maiden voyage was from Southampton, England to Cherbourg, France...then to Queenstown Cobh, Ireland from which it would start its trek to New York City in the United States.

Were any aware of their coming fate? John Jacob Astor and his wife Madeleine were expecting a child and passengers were quite shocked at the outrage of Madeleine's ventures out in dresses "adjusted" to hide the bulge that everyone knew was there.

Was Michel Navratil thinking of the possible consequences of kidnapping his sons Michel Jr. and Edmond? Was that on his mind when at last passengers were told of the oncoming sinking of the "unsinkable" ship? He would not have to dread being met by constabulary at the American docks.

Benjamin Guggenheim was a gentleman of the first order and calmly accepted going down with the ship. Several accounts verify that he sat in the lobby with his manservant, waiting for the watery grave just hours away.

What of J. Bruce Ismay, White Star Line's Director, who sailed to take notes regarding the voyage and the ship's performance? He survived the disaster.