Interview with Millvina Dean

My father decided he would like to go to America. We had some people in Kansas. And so he decided to go to Kansas and open a tobacconist shop. My father and my mother and my brother, we were all going to Kansas. I should say. it was very expensive. And so, of course, we went third class.

We weren't supposed to go on that ship, by the way. We were booked on one other one. They phoned up my father and said, "There is a vacancy or a berth on the Titanic. Would you like to take it?" And he, of course, was over the moon. Yes, he came back and said to my mother, "Cool, we're going on the maiden voyage of the Titanic." He thought it was so wonderful. So it was some kind of fate, wasn't it?

And my father came up to see us off on the lifeboat. And he said, "Well, I'll be coming." Of course, I suppose, he hoped he'd be coming after us. My mother got in, and then, I suppose, she was waiting for me to come. And she probably thought that my brother was there somewhere, that somebody else had helped him in you see. She hadn't any idea that he wasn't in the same lifeboat. And then she started searching for him. And of course, because she couldn't find him anywhere, I mean, it was absolutely dreadful, because she had no idea what had happened to him.

Well, when we were on the Carpathia and my mother suddenly realized that my brother was on there, well, of course, it was absolutely marvelous. Yes, it was absolutely wonderful for her to have found him because she quite thought he'd gone too.

Curator's note: This transcript is pieced together from clips of the same interview source used in the documentaries, Titanic: Death of a Dream and Titanic: The Legend Lives On (1994, A&E Networks). The original date of the interview is unknown.