OBITUARIES : M. Drew, 82; Survivor of the Titanic

Marshall Drew, one of the last of the 706 survivors of the sinking of the Titanic, is dead of heart failure at the age of 82.

Drew, who was 8 years old when the mammoth passenger liner was sunk by an iceberg, died Friday. He was a retired schoolteacher who lived in Westerly, R.I., for years and died at Eastern Long Island Hospital in Suffolk County.

Drew was traveling with his aunt and uncle when the so-called unsinkable luxury liner went down on its maiden voyage on April 14, 1912.

Drew and his aunt, Lulu Drew, were loaded onto a lifeboat while she bade a tearful goodby to her husband, James, who perished.

When the sunken wreckage of the Titanic was found recently off Newfoundland, Drew said it should not be disturbed.

“I think it should be left alone. It’s a graveyard,” said Drew, whose only souvenir from the ship was a black ribbon from a sailor’s cap embroidered “R.M.S. Titanic.”

Drew said in a 1977 interview that he was in bed but not sleeping when the ocean liner struck the iceberg and remembered hearing a “thud.”

“I remember seeing the rows of porthole lights sink into the sea, row after row, until the first deck was awash. And then came a tremendous explosion, steam, smoke, a flash of light,” he said.

“And then everything blacked out. I didn’t see anything after that, but I heard the cries of the people across the water. Then all was quiet. That was it.”

Drew said he remembered waking up the next morning in a tiny lifeboat surrounded by icebergs.

“I woke up in daylight and 360 degrees around us there were icebergs. You would think you were in the Arctic Circle,” he said. “We were so close to some of the icebergs the crewmen could have touched them with the oars.”