It was said to be unsinkable, but Monday marks the 90th anniversary of the night the Titanic went down. NOREEN BARR talks to the last British survivor of the most famous maritime disaster.

FOR most of us, the sinking of the Titanic is a tragic piece of history, an unforgettable disaster of the 20th Century. But for Millvina Dean, the disaster formed her life. It was an event that changed everything forever.

Now aged 90, Millvina was the youngest survivor of the Titanic, which sunk to the bottom of the North Atlantic just after 2am on April 15, 1912. She was just nine weeks old when she was plucked to safety with her mother and brother.

Her father, Bertram, had sold his London pub to fund third class fares for his family, with the dream of starting a new life as a shopkeeper in Kansas City. But he was to be one of more than 1,500 people who died in the tragedy. Also among the victims was WT Stead, former editor of The Northern Echo, who had reached national prominence for his campaign against child prostitution.

Millvina, who now lives in Hampshire, says: "My mother had only been married for about four years and she thought the world of my father. It was so awful for her that she never wanted to speak about it.

"I think it was my father who saved us, because when he went to find out what the crash was and found the Titanic had hit an iceberg, he immediately went back to my mother and said, 'Get the children up on deck as quickly as possible'.

"So many other people thought the Titanic would never sink and didn't bother. But my father didn't take a chance."

As Millvina's mother Georgetta struggled with her baby and 23-month-old son Bertram Junior, three crewmen pulled them to the front of the queue for lifeboats. But as Georgetta got into lifeboat 13, and Millvina was handed down to her in a mail sack, they were separated from Bertram Jnr, and only reunited again on the Carpathia, which picked up the Titanic's 705 survivors.

The memory of the disaster so haunted Georgetta that she waited until her daughter was eight before telling her about their ordeal, and about the father she never knew.

"I knew nothing about him. In fact, I didn't know what he looked like until a few years ago when a relation died and there was a photograph of my father. That was the first time I'd seen his picture," Millvina says.